In Nigeria, most schools have already closed for the year. The Nigerian government has extended the closure of all schools in the country until January 18, 2021. The decision was announced on the 21st of December by Boss Mustapha, the chairman of the Presidential Task Force. Mustapha said, “The PTF on the advice of the Federal Ministry of Education, expects that schools would have vacated from the 18th December 2020 and remain closed till at least the 18th of January, 2021 to enable the measures introduced to take effect.” The restrictions were reenacted following a second wave of coronavirus. Festivities including should be restricted to not more than 50 persons.
It’s always interesting to see how other countries are handling the pandemic and the measures they will take to try and bounce back. It’s also interesting how Nigeria, an arguably third world country, is planning on reopening schools in January and the United States isn’t even planning on putting kids back into schools yet. It also seems like Nigeria has arguably bigger issues to tackle, such as SARS and all the scams that come out of Nigeria. Nigeria could also be seen as another backer for reopening schools in the United States, as so many other 1st world countries have already done the same.
In class, we have discussed the realist perspective in session three, and how power determines status in the international stage. But this could be used as an argument against the realist perspective, as Nigeria, a generally insignificant country that isn’t heard from on the global scale very often, has a headstart on reopening their education system. As global hegemon, the United States needs to step up it’s game and get this vaccine out as soon as possible, because a lot of our systems were hindered from COVID, and we need to restart our schools for the benefit of all students.