Hajj and Umrah stakeholders have refuted claims by the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria, NAHCON, that the 2023 hajj is the first time that all Nigerian pilgrims are visiting Madinah before Arafat.
Recall that the Hajj commission had introduced a new policy restricting pilgrims’ stay in Madinah to 5 days, saying that the decision was aimed at giving Nigerian pilgrims the opportunity to visit Madina in the first phase or before Arafat.
The commission, in a statement by its Deputy Director (Information and Publications), Mousa Ubandawaki, noted that such an opportunity is the first time in a long history of the Hajj exercise in the country.
But while speaking with DAILY NIGERIAN on Sunday, a tour operator based in Abuja, Rabiu Mohammed, disclosed that records have shown that Nigerian pilgrims in the past visited Madinah before Arafat.
He said: “Previous official hajj reports submitted to the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation (OSGF) by NAHCON indicated that during 2015 hajj, 92 percent of Nigerian pilgrims had visited Madinah before Arafat. In 2016, all the Nigerian pilgrims (100 percent) had visited Madinah before Arafat.
“Also, 99 percent of Nigerian pilgrims visited Madinah in 2017 before moving to Makkah for hajj, while in 2018, only 83 percent of the pilgrims visited Madinah before hajj. In 2019, 98 percent of Nigerian contingents to hajj visited Madinah before Arafat.
“In all these five years – 2015 to 2019 – all the pilgrims spent their full eight days in Madinah, unlike in 2023 where the commission had to slash it to five.”
Speaking on the complaint of overcrowding of Nigerian pilgrims in the City of Madinah, another Hajj and Umrah stakeholder, Aminu Salisu, disagreed with NAHCON, saying that that “overcrowding” in Madinah could never be the factor for the slashing of the Madinah days to five.
According to him, the actual reasons for the slashing of the Madinah days included NAHCON’s alleged delay in processing Nigerian pilgrims’ accommodation at the airport due to the non-availability of bed spaces.
Other factors, he said, are “mismanagement of bed spaces leading to pilgrims staying up to four hours inside buses in front of hotels, thereby disrupting the buses cycle of transporting pilgrims of other countries on schedule; and sending Nigerian pilgrims to wrong hotels causing confusion and traffic gridlock around the hotel areas”.
Mr Salisu said: “It is worthy of note that because of these aforementioned reasons, the Saudi Ministry of Hajj had queried NAHCON three times, and summoned its officials in Madinah to explain this unprecedented anomaly.
“Also, pilgrims from at least three flights were accommodated in low-budget accommodations outside the highbrow Markaziyya which they paid for, thereby triggering protests and complaints from them.
“It was also established that Saudi authorities never dictate to visiting pilgrims the number of days they spend in Madinah.
“The idea of reducing the number of days in Madinah was conceived in one of the meetings when it became apparent that NAHCON’s handling of Nigerian pilgrims in Madinah was capable of disrupting the entire hajj ecosystem in Islam’s second holiest city.”
