The Federal Ministry of Education has dismissed claims of another outbreak of epidemic in Queens College Lagos, as being circulated in some sections of the media.
The Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mr Sonny Echono made the clarification in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Lagos.
The clarification followed claims of an outbreak of epidemic in which over 700 students were affected, while over 1000 students have allegedly vacated the college.
โI want to say that all such reports going round about outbreak of epidemic in Queens College is total falsehood.
โA I am speaking with you, I just left that school about one hour ago and on my way back to the airport en-route Abuja.
โI chose to dash down to Lagos to come and see things for myself, because such stories are damaging.
โOn getting to the college, I went straight to the sick bay. Yes I saw a few students being attended to on account of flu and malaria.
โI spoke with the nurse at length, spoke with the doctor, the principal and some other persons, what I discovered is that the students were majorly having flu and malaria, nothing more.
โI was equally conducted round the college to do some inspection and based on this, I can confidently tell you that there is nothing like epidemic,โ he said.
Echono added that the situation in the college was calm and peaceful, stressing that the health conditions of the few students had nothing to do with food and water poisoning as being speculated.
โThis is a period of flu. As I speak, I am also having the same flu and that is why I did not bother to speak with the other students for fear of spreading it to them.
โWhat could be happening in this whole situation is that there could be an infighting which I do not like to interfere.
โBut what I will not tolerate is for anyone to spread falsehood and send panic to the public, that is not acceptable.
โI have taken note of my findings, the ministry of health people too, I learnt have been there and will still be there tomorrow to further investigate the situation.
โAt the end of this, we will then issue a statement to the public,โ the permanent secretary assured.
