Ogun State yesterday recorded low turnout of pupils as teachers and students in both government and privately owned primary and secondary schools across the 20 local government areas of the state resumed for the 2014 and 2015 academic session.

In most of the schools monitored yesterday in Abeokuta, the state capital as well as in the Remo and Ijebu educational development areas, National Mirror observed that most primary school pupils as well as secondary school students failed to turn up, while teachers were fully on ground and ready to commence the new academic session.

Some of the teachers who spoke with our correspondent on c ondition of anonymity attributed the low turnout to rumour in some quarters that schools in the state would not resume over alleged failure of government to provide the Ebola Virus Disease detecting equipment in most of the public schools.

Other teachers attributed the poor attendance to the long Eid-el-Kabir festival which also coincided with the long school vacation.

Our correspondent also recalls that the state chapter of the National Association of Proprietors of Private Schools, NAPPS, had during the long vacation, been at loggerheads with the state government over the new resumption date which the proprietors said may not be realistic due to absence of EVD detecting equipment in schools.

The state government had on Tuesday distributed the thermometer and other equipment meant to check the pupils for Ebola disease ahead of yesterday’s resumption as demanded by the state chapters of Academic Staff Union of Secondary Schools, ASUSS, and the Nigeria Union of Teachers, NUT.

In Osun State, only private schools resumed yesterday, as teachers in public schools across the state shunned the resumption order of the state government.

National Mirror, during a visit to some public schools in Osogbo and Ede towns leant that teachers and a handful of students had resumed as ordered by the state government, only to be turned back by the officials of state chapter of NUT who claimed in a circular issued in Osogbo yesterday and circulated to public schools, that it had already reached agreement with government to return to class on Monday, October 13.

When contacted, Osun NUT chairman, Comrade Saka Adesiyan, said teachers shunned the resumption order because some of its demand before schools would reopen had not been met.