The administration of the University of Upper Nile has announced that all the lectures which were disrupted during the month-long Covid-19 partial lockdown would resume today, Monday, April 19, 2021.

The announcement was made a day after the South Sudan government lifted the national COVID-19 lockdown. Last Monday, the university's students held a peaceful demonstration demanding the reopening of the institute. 

Speaking to Radio Tamazuj, Prof. Satire Obore Otti, the University Students’ Affairs Dean, said all the students whose lectures were disrupted during the March 3 lockdown will get back to their classes on Monday. 

“We are resuming on Monday according to the lifting of Covid-19 pandemic lockdown. So, the lectures will resume for all the classes except for the first and second year because those classes had their lectures disputed during the lockdown,” Prof Obore said. 

The university official, however, pointed out that they will hold a meeting in the coming weeks to decide the fate of the rest of the students. 

“Those classes which are left out, the first and the second years, their issues will be sorted after that when others are continuing,” he said. 

Prof. Obore urged all the students to abide by the Covid-19 safety measures while at the university campus. 

One final-year student, Charles Deng said the resumption came as a relief for them. 

“We thank the university for responding to our demand but we are still calling on the administration to reopen the university uniformly,” he said. 

For his part, Barac Atem, the Upper Nile University students guild president, welcomed the move. 

“As students, we are happy that the university is reopened. And as the students' leadership, we are engaging the university so that the first and the second year also assume lectures. We know that it is an administrative issue because a Dean Board meeting had to be held to fix the time for registration and interviews for the first year. We call on the university to expedite the process,” he said. 

Upper Nile University is one of the higher learning public institutions in the country besides Juba University, Bahr el Ghazal University, Rumbek University, and Dr. John Garang University in Bor.