During the first coronavirus lockdown, I appealed for the government to insist that telecommunications firms make educational resources exempt from data charges to save a generation of Nigerians from having their education permanently disrupted by COVID-19.
With a new and more contagious strain of the coronavirus apparently identified in Nigeria, and infections rising across the nation, that appeal has become even more urgent.
In the past week, Nigeria has reported a 52% increase in cases of the coronavirus.
The head of Africa’s disease control body, the African Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, has also confirmed that new and more contagious variant of the disease seems to have emerged in Nigeria.
When the emergence of such a highly-contagious mutant strain of Covid-19 was confirmed in the UK it was a matter of weeks until the government once again closed down schools to control the spread of the disease.
Even if widespread school closures do not become necessary in Nigeria as a result of our new variant it is highly likely that more and more Nigerians will keep their kids off school in order to keep them safe in the coming weeks.
And our nation cannot afford future generations to experience yet more disruption to their education.
A couple of weeks ago, the internationally influential British newspaper the Financial Times published an editorial calling Nigeria “a failed state”.

Nigeria is not tailored to think this way you. Even the prices of data they claimed were brought down, was there any difference?