Hajj stampede: ‘Saudi security requires big investment on foreign languages’ – MD, Medview

How many pilgrims did Meview airlines airlifted from Nigeria for the 2015 hajj exercise? Medview airlines airlifted close to 9, 000 regular pilgrims from Nigeria apart from those that went for the hajj as international pilgrims. We also evacuated pilgrims from some African countries, precisely from Duala in Cameroon. The total number is 10,800 pilgrims […]

How many pilgrims did Meview airlines airlifted from Nigeria for the 2015 hajj exercise?
Medview airlines airlifted close to 9, 000 regular pilgrims from Nigeria apart from those that went for the hajj as international pilgrims. We also evacuated pilgrims from some African countries, precisely from Duala in Cameroon. The total number is 10,800 pilgrims from within and outside Nigeria. In Borno State, we evaluated over 1, 250 pilgrims and we have started our return airlift. As you can see from our schedules here,  we will evacuate pilgrims from Ogun state in our inaugural return and we shall end the operations on the 14th of October insha Allah. For Borno pilgrims, we are starting on the 7th of October with flight number 324. All our flights to Borno are designed to arrive in the morning due to the security arrangements in Maiduguri, so that pilgrims don’t fall into curfew periods when movements are restricted. We want them to be able to go home and not to be confined to the airport. 
You are very much aware of the stampede that led to the death of over 700 people around the Jamarat. Your company also brought pilgrims through the tour unit for international pilgrims, did you lose of them?
From Allah we all come and to him we shall all return and everyone has the ‘when’ and the ‘how’ he or she will depart this world. Two of our passengers have so far been confirmed dead and four are at the ICU (Intensive Care Unit). I was at the hospital last night, I saw photographs of victims, we did some identification and the identification is still ongoing.  We have some passengers that are missing. In total, we have concerns over seven people. 
What is your take on various questions raised with regards to what went wrong?
For some of us who have been part of hajj exercise for the past 30 years, the Saudi authorities need to heavily invest in the area of communication. The language barrier is a very serious impediment in crowd management. The Saudi Government just has to realize that hajj pilgrimage will continue so long as the world hasn’t come to an end. And Muslims from all over the world, speaking different languages, other than Arabic will come. The language in Saudi Arabia is Arabic, that is what is mostly used by the Saudi security and others involved in managing pilgrims in their crowd control. African countries bring thousands of pilgrims and apart from Egypt, Algeria and a few, most don’t speak Arabic. Nigeria is a major player in hajj but most of our citizens don’t speak Arabic. Pilgrims come so much from Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Malaysia, China, Afghanistan and parts of Europe and majority don’t understand or speak Arabic. The Saudi authorities must develop a sort of multinational approach to enhance communication so as to bridge the barrier in languages for effective crowd control. They have to train their security men to specialize in oral communication in English and native languages that are commonly spoken in countries that always send higher number of pilgrims, such that during hajj operations, those people that are trained to specialize in particular languages can be deployed to areas where citizens of foreign countries are designed to pass through as their routes. They should also be deployed  where their tents are designed to be so that the security men can effectively pass life- saving messages and also get feedbacks from pilgrims. For instance, the Saudi security can just pick English and two or three languages in each of these countries. There is no northerner that doesn’t understand or speak Hausa regardless of his tribe. There is no body from southwest that doesn’t understand Yoruba, majority of the pilgrims from Nigeria are from the north and southwest. We have pilgrims also from the southeast and south-south but majority are sometimes northerners who live there and also understand Hausa. There are natives of the two geo-political zones also going for hajj, all of them speak English, and English is one extremely important area the Saudis must invest in to enhance inter-personal communication. There is no harm in the Saudis learning how to speak Igbo language. By learning Igbo, they will even be encouraging the spread of Islam in the southeastern part of Nigeria which has far less number of native Muslims. In the south-south, there are many who speak Igbo in Rivers, Delta and Edo States. Alternatively, the Saudi authorities may consider employing citizens of countries or employing those who speak good English and native languages as part of special crowd control measures for hajj alone.