When my six-year-old niece told me that she receives tutorials live on zoom from her tutor, I did not believe her until I asked her parents for confirmation of what she told me; to verify and affirm what she has just told me. And they confirmed it to be true. I was shocked because: how can a six-year-old access zoom with a gadget either with a computer or a tablet phone? But that is achievable under the guidance and tutelage of her parents.

Undoubtedly, this Zoom thing has proved its relevance in the past couple of months since the worldwide lockdown; the “stay at home” order for everyone. The National Open University of Nigeria (NOUN), most especially cannot but help it by adopting it since it is an open school that helps people to acquire knowledge at the comfort of their homes. A lot of people first found it weird, most especially the aged in NOUN that had resented the self-study in the past while the young ones does both the self-study and the online tutorials via YouTube, zoom and other available channels to study from. But when studying via zoom, and even writing exams, is the most available option during the coronavirus lockdown everyone, well not everyone, has to opt for the exams and it has recorded great success in the past couple of weeks it started.

As at today, most tertiary institutions are impatient with the lockdown that has no actual stipulated time it would be over and they are at a loss in monetary terms, so much money and even non-generation of revenue to the Federal Government. So, some out of the institutions took the bold step by matriculating their students on zoom and also some private schools wants to adopt the full National Open University of Nigeria style by resuming their school online and students can get back to studying.

NOUN is the most criticised school in Nigeria, condemning the way they run their educational programmes, tagging theirs as mediocrity. Today, just every school that has the facility to run a partial open university wants to do it the National Open University of Nigeria way. And just a few of those schools has the resources to run it, because of the sub-standardisation of most of the tertiary institutions in Nigeria. National Open University of Nigeria is that school that was forever ready in any world's circumstance.

More essentially, 95 per cent of those schools ready to run an open school online are private institutions. So, technically all federal and state government schools do not have the technical ability to run an open school during the pandemic. They face technical problems like shortage of computers in the facility room, non-functional intranet programmes, and I can go on and on. The National Open University of Nigeria hypothetically saw the future.

Mike-Nifty is a curator, economist and public affairs analyst: nifty.mics@yahoo.com

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