Nigeria’s Hajj: One Hitch Too Many

By

Isa Muhammad Inuwa

ismi2000ng@yahoo.com

RECENTLY, many countries the world over have concluded their Hajj exercise for this year 2006, yet Nigeria’s conduct in the Hajj from its beginning to the end has been barely poor and left nothing to write home about, despite the so called early (one year) preparations. Regrettably, it has been a shameful record ever set and left behind for forth coming generations yet unborn.

For over two centuries or so, since the epochal period of the northern Nigerian Jihadist, the Sheikh Usman Bin Fodio in 1804 or even much prior to that, pilgrims from Nigeria of those days have been traveling, though by land, to Saudi Arabia, yet not in so much a dramatic and tragic way as it is happening in our today’s so called modern times. As a result of the poor performance encountered during this year’s Hajj, a whooping 14,000 to 16,000 pilgrims were left grounded and lost their singular and golden opportunity of performing the pristine ritual. One disturbing thing is that as we are advancing further into new civilizations coupled with new facilities and inventions that suppose to have made our Hajj operations smoother and hitch-free, however, the gluttonous and lackadaisical attitude of Hajj officials and related authorities has reduced our Hajj exercise to the sorry situation we are witnessing in Nigeria today.

Aside from the carefree and shoddy arrangements for Hajj every year, the exercise has also ironically been turned into an enterprising ground where some few greedy individuals and officials alike make their field day and capitalize upon to make illegal and unlawful money, thereby bastardizing the very good intention and genuine motive behind the exercise which supposed to have its operations optimally clean and incorruptible. Such people in the form of highly placed political leaders and appointees, Hajj officials at the federal and state levels as well as some fortune seeking so-called airliners and private Hajj agents all combine to scavenge on the hard-earned resources of thousands of gullible intending pilgrims every year round and the pilgrims inevitably fall victims to undue sufferings, manipulations and short-changing of these hounding Hajj managers. For instance, instead subsidizing the Hajj fare for the intending pilgrims so that they pay less amount of money, as much as twenty percent of money paid by each pilgrim is yearly being siphoned in the name of “administrative charges”, while each registered private Hajj operator remits as much as five percent to the federal authorities in form of taxation. The question here is where is the complementary benefit derivable by pilgrims from these chunky deductions.

The Amirul Hajj and leader of federal government delegation to this years Hajj,Senator Nasiru Ibrahim Mantu and particularly the 2006 committee on Hajj received the severest bashing and heaviest punch for failures recorded in the recent Hajj operation. Two monumental and seemingly deliberate blunders by the Hajj committee were largely noted to have worsened things and caused a stalemate in exercise. First, the committee said to have knowingly nominated one of the airlines barred from operation by the Saudi authorities for its past negligence and incompetence.
That had caused the major snag at the beginning of airlift of pilgrims to the Holy Land and as a result, the Katsina State grounded pilgrims were the worst hit by this scandal. The second blunder was the withholding of hajj funds by the committee, which was said to have trapped the money in bank account in order to attract interest for personal aggrandizement When the airlines and other agencies were starved of fund at the crucial moment of take off exercise, the whole arrangements earlier made in good time and in very early time by essential arms of the Hajj almost turned useless and of no effect.

As a result of this development chief Bola Ahmad Tinubu, the Lagos State governor while speaking during the recent Eid-El-Kabir at the Obalande praying ground on January 10th, 2006 put the anti-corruption organ, the EFCC to taste when he questioned its sincerely unless it digs into monetary scandals in Hajj operations and calls the culprits to book. Another cause for concern is the fact that after an estimated period of 50 years experience of Hajj operation by Air, it still remains a far cry for Nigeria to perfect in the once in-a-year exercise. It could be recalled that in the glorious past, precisely in the 1970’s to mid 1980’s with a single national carrier, the Nigerian Airways, not a single incident of failure to airlift intending pilgrims had been experienced. In those years the Nigerian Airways as an airline owned by Nigeria’s central government was an airline to brag about and a very enviable one possessing its sizeable fleet of worthy aircrafts. However, later in late 1980’s,when the Nigerian Airways crumbled due to reasons which include mismanagement, the main burden shifted to private and commercially based airlines to transport the pilgrims to and from the Holy Land.

This issue of reverting to private means was one of the basic causes of continuous hike in Hajj fares yearly, in addition to economic adjustments by successive government and the hyper-inflationary situation Nigeria is made to grapple with over the years.

For instance, during the year 1995, the Hajj fare payable by a Nigerian pilgrim stood at the official rates of between 35,000 to 45,000 Naira. Regrettably however, in a matter of a decade, the charges shot up to between 280,000 to 350,000 in the year 2005 and 2006. One notable reason for such rapid rise in Hajj fares was the poor attitude of introducing black-marketing into the exercise by some greedy, disreputable and shylock private business individuals, who were in the habit of conniving with Hajj officials and buying away large number of seats on official rates, only to sell such sears to late buyers at prices higher or even double the officially approved ones. Having noticed this illegal exercise of the notorious opportunists, particularly during the 1995 Hajj when such black marketers charged between 60,000 to 80,000 Naira per Hajj seat which they themselves got at the rate of 45,000 Naira only, the federal government in a bid to neutralize activities of black marketers decided to hike the Hajj fares in 1996 to between 100,000 to 150,000 naira per seat. By implication, this is to say that an average Nigerian pilgrim is made to pay higher charges and made to fall victim to exploitations of government policies and yearly dictation of “Hajj fare” by the federal authorities and connivance of so-called hajj officials and their greedy private Hajj business opportunists.

Worst still, despite the tormenting amount of hajj fare, the Nigeria’s pilgrim’s welfare and security is not guaranteed as he or she is barely left to his fate and to fend for himself throughout the operation, while the officials, who were sponsored from the money of the pilgrims dodge away to their specially treated enclaves, enjoying an upper hand in everything.

Consider the development during the recent Hajj exercise where pilgrims were forced to comply to officially approved kilograms of luggage, as a result of which “extra luggage” of many pilgrims were seized and forfeited while the “officials” maintained their habit of carrying all bags and baggage to their satisfaction and far above the pegged kilograms and they passed unquestioned. This kind of preferential treatment even if observed, ought not to exceed limits particularly in religious exercises such as hajj. This was why the incident of the take off of federal government team in the “last flight” with the leader shown waving away, disturbed not only the thousands grounded Nigerian intending pilgrims, but also made a topic of discussion for many Nigerian Muslims. Also during the return journey, while almost all the hajj officials ranging from the federal officials to their state counterparts were already flown back home for the past several days, until Tuesday, February 7th, radio reports indicated that Nigerian pilgrims from certain states were left stranded at king Abdul Azeez airport in Jeddah with no single “official” to take care of them or guide them through. The tangible irony of the sorry state of hajj exercise in our present time is that while the figure of Nigerian pilgrims in those years was by far higher than their number in nowadays, yet Hajj in the past was much more smoother and less problematic. Could the reason be that both authorities and officials of those days were more trustworthy, reliable and faithful than what obtains today.

On the final note, Nigeria’s federal government ought to be more responsive and responsible towards finding final solutions for the highly imperative yearly exercise of Hajj succeed in order to save the dignity of its citizens and redeem the country’s image from the outside world. The federal government should be either totally and seriously committed by restoring the earlier banned National Hajj Commission or else surrender the exercise to state governments and organized bodies to deliberate and come up with strategies for the formation of a genuinely reputable independent body to accumulate and manage Hajj funds on a kind of a permanent and thriving investment, as well as to a arrange the essential logistics for annual Hajj operations throughout Nigeria. Likewise laws on across the border travels by land or sea should be relaxed by Nigerian authorities and subsequently by sister countries enroute the roads and water ways leading to Saudi Arabia, to further boost alternative ways for the teeming number of Nigerians wishing and hoping to travel to and from the Holy Land safely and hitch free, every year.

Having taken all the listed causes for failure in the yearly exercise into account, we pray and hope to see the end of the yearly tragedy being experienced by Nigerian pilgrims due no fault of their, and few, if any. While harping on the tragedy of the estimated 14,000 to 16,000 intending pilgrims from various states of Nigeria who could not be airlifted to Saudi Arabia during the 2006 Hajj exercise, authorities concerned ought to introduce special consolation for them and undertake to offer them special preference during the next exercise in order to compensate for their sufferings. It can be said here that enough is enough!   ISA MUHAMMAD INUWA is a journalist in Kano. (ismi2000ng@yahoo.com)