The National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) has accredited an additional course for the Federal College of Agricultural Produce Technology, Kano.
Mr Mohammed Ibrahim, the Provost of the college, said that NBTE had given the college the approval to offer Statistics in addition to the four previous courses that the college was offering.
Ibrahim, who disclosed this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Wednesday, said the college was looking forward to the approval of three more courses before the end of the year.
According to him, the college offer Food Technology, Computer Science, Science Laboratory Technology and Pre-National Diploma programmes and was awaiting the approval of Agricultural Technology, Animal Science and Production and Horticulture.
“We chose these courses because those are the ones we have resources to run for now.”
Ibrahim added that since the establishment of the institute in 2008, it had over 500 students and 132 staff.
“We have also adopted two secondary schools to work with — Government Girls secondary School, Dala, and Government Secondary School, Stadium.
“This adoption comes under the West Africa Agricultural Productivity Programme (WAAPP), which is a project of the Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria (ARCN).
“The programme is to encourage the students to like Agriculture and take to farming.
“We have our staff going to the schools to interact with the students and we have a lecturer that takes them on? Agricultural Science.”
The provost said that the college had helped the adopted schools to establish poultry farms and fish ponds which the students were running under the supervision of their teachers.
“They also sell some of these farm products to both their teachers and outsiders.”
Ibrahim said that the college was working toward adopting three more villages and two more schools.
“We will soon adopt some villages as our site of technologies. We will take a village, work with its people and teach them various technologies in Agriculture.
“The village will be divided into four groups — the farmers, the women, the youth and a mixed group so that everybody can benefit.
“By the time the village is well groomed in agriculture, neighbouring villages will learn and benefit from it.
“We are going to adopt Barku village, Erukula village and Karfi village,'' he said.