The National Commission for Colleges of Education (NCCE) has said that the Zamfara State College of Education, Maru, has been operating without accreditation for 15 years running.

The Deputy Director in the Commission, Dr Abdulkabir Otuniyi stated this on Tuesday when he led officials of the commission to the college for accreditation assessment.

Otuniyi noted that the NCCE accreditation for colleges of education was done once every four years.

“But since 2005 when the college was last accredited, it has recorded no other accreditation exercise until today.

“But between 2005 when the college was first accredited and now l can see the great achievements and transformation,” Otuniyi observed.

He lauded the management of the college for both infrastructural and academic achievements recorded.

“Despite lack of accreditation, the college recorded rapid transformation especially in the areas of human resources development,” he said.

He appreciated the management of the college for giving emphasis to quality assurance and improving security.

“We sympathise with you over fire outbreak which destroyed valuable properties and other belongings of the college”, he added.

Earlier, Provost of the College, Alhaji Ibrahim Usman said the second visit of the accreditation team to the college since its establishment was an indication of the progress made by the current management to move the college forward.

Usman said presently, the college had a total of 221 academic staff and 166 non-academic staff.

“Out of the 221 academic staff, 29 have successfully completed their PhD programmes, 19 are PhD in view, the remaining are distributed through Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees.

“On students’ enrollment for the current 2019/2020 academic session, 2,521 students disaggregated by 2,167 males and 354 females were admitted across all programmes of the college,” he said.

According to him, the college, through a partnership with the NCCE has presently been fully restructured to offer-level specific teacher training programmes across seven schools, 23 academic departments and 34 subject combinations.

“We are seeking accreditation of all 24 departments of the college by NCCE.

“This college is privileged to be one of the twelve pilot teacher training institutions in the country that have benefited from the NCCE,” he said.

The provost said that the college had concluded all the arrangements to commence degree programmes in affiliation with the Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto and Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria.

“Just recently, we received Resources Assessment teams from the two Universities, we are waiting for their responses to commence the degree programmes any moment from now,,” he said.

The provost commended Gov. Bello Matawalle, Maru Emirate Council and entire people of Maru community for their support to the college. (NAN)