Tour operators pick holes in Senate hajj panel report

The immediate past President of Association of Hajj and Umrah Operators of Nigeria (AHUON), Alhaji Abdulfatah Abdulmojeed, has disagreed with the Senate ad-hoc committee which recently probed allegations of irregularities in the operations of the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON). Abdulmojeed in an interview with Daily Trust said the committee which recently released its […]

The immediate past President of Association of Hajj and Umrah Operators of Nigeria (AHUON), Alhaji Abdulfatah Abdulmojeed, has disagreed with the Senate ad-hoc committee which recently probed allegations of irregularities in the operations of the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON).

Abdulmojeed in an interview with Daily Trust said the committee which recently released its report that purportedly indicted NAHCON does not understand how hajj operations work.

He said all the charges paid to different service providers are not hidden and they can be verified from Saudi Arabian authorities.

He said the charges would have been more if not for the intervention of NAHCON, adding that the coming of the Hajj commission has stabilized the Hajj operations.

Also speaking, the current President of AHUON, Alhaji Abdullahi Butu, corroborated the remarks of his predecessor, saying all these charges were paid directly to the appropriate authorities in Saudi.

The only money paid to NAHCON by the tour operators, he said, was the service charge of $75 per pilgrims and the Hajj Development Levy.

Daily Trust reports that every year, NAHCON takes along representatives of tour operators, states pilgrim boards, National Assembly foreign committee members, as well as the Nigerian consulate in Jeddah and embassy in Riyadh for negotiation of Madina and Makkah accommodation, catering services, transportation, among other services in Saudi Arabia.

“If you have travelled to Saudi Arabia before in the last two years, we also pay SR2000. We pay charges for the visas. Then we pay for accommodation,” Abdulmojeed said.

He added that: “Some of us are worried because, before the coming of NAHCON in 2007, we knew what used to happen. Pilgrims were stranded and so on and so forth. But in 2006 when the Presidential committee started, up till today, the pilgrims have never been stranded and their welfare has been improved tremendously.

“It was wrong for the Senate panel to lump up all the charges as one. The panel doesn’t really know what they are saying. Payments for different groups of people are for different things.

“We pay separately for accommodation in Madinah, we pay separately for accommodation in Makkah, we pay separately for the tent in Makkah to Muassassah, you pay for the catering services to the caterers. We pay for transportation to the United Agents.

“So, what they are talking about? At any rate, if they have their facts, let them place them on the table. These things are not hidden, they can easily go to the Saudi embassy or write to Saudi Ministry of Hajj but they did not do that,” he said.

He also shed light on the decision to use chartered airlines instead of scheduled carriers to airlift pilgrims, saying this was explained to the senators by the Managing Director of Med-View Airline, Alhaji Muneer Bankole during a public hearing.

He said, “Fortunately, I was at the session during the hearing. It is true you can go (to Hajj) with scheduled airlines but scheduled airlines cannot carry all the Nigerian pilgrims of 95,000 then, and about 65,000 now. Why? The flight that is coming for the scheduled is bringing passengers from its hub to Nigeria doing its normal business and it is taking us from here to its hub, then to Saudi Arabia.

“The one it has given us is one lane. And when it is coming to pick us also, it is bringing people from different countries to Saudi Arabia. It is not a chartered flight.

“The other ones are chartered and the rule of the Saudi is that if you have chartered for the Hajj, you cannot use it for any other thing. Therefore, when they carry the pilgrims to Saudi Arabia, they return the aircraft empty whereas, in the case of the schedule, there is nothing empty,” he said.