By GARBA MUHAMMAD in Makkah

The Forum of Chief Executive Officers of State Muslim Pilgrims Boards/Agencies/Commissions has fired back at Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed, rejecting his insistence that most of the Hajj services must be decentralized to allow state governments to take full control of affairs of pilgrims who paid through their respective pilgrims’ welfare boards.

Deputy Chairman of the forum, Alh Farouk Aliyu Yaro stated this on Friday night, June 22, 2024, while responding to questions during a press briefing on the resolution reached from their meeting on the just concluded 2024 Hajj operations.

Flanked by the Chairman Alh Idris Almakura and other members of the forum, the Deputy Chairman, in his response on behalf of the chairman said the call for the decentralization and abolition of the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) has no basis.

Yaro, who doubles as the Executive Chairman of the Kebbi State Pilgrims Welfare Agency said the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has a standing policy of engaging with countries across the world on Hajj operations and not with states.

“No State has the power to deal directly with the Saudi Ministry of Hajj and Umrah or any other Saudi authority in the conduct of Hajj operations except NAHCON. The policy has not in anyway given any state such right to deal directly with Saudi.

“Therefore, the call to abolish NAHCON and decentralizing Hajj operations has no basis.

“We should not allow our emotions to effect the overall interest of pilgrims, policy and global guideline of Hajj operation.

“Like every other country in the world, Saudi policy vested the responsibility on the NAHCON, which represents the entire states in Nigeria in provision of visa and other international travel policies for pilgrims.

“The 2024 Hajj operation under the current leadership of NAHCON has recorded over 85% success. Which is okay. We have confidence in the commissions’ ability to even improve on that.

“We should not always expect things to work our way. What is expected of us is to give constructive advice to NAHCON on any lapses we might have observed, and not to condemn the whole system that has performed creditably well.

“We are calling on our leaders to look at the overall achievements on NAHCON and not to single out a minor fault”.

Chairman of the forum Alh Idris Ahmad Al-Makura in his address, said the forum just met where it did a post-mortem of the 2024 Hajj and came out with some resolutions in order to let the whole world know what happened in 2024 Hajj.

He said the forum commended NAHCON for the early processing and approval of visas to pilgrims.

According to him, this is the first time the state pilgrims got visas between 2-3 weeks before the outbound flights.

The chairman said It was also noteworthy that NAHCON was able to process the visas of Nigerian pilgrims in record time.

Al-Makura who doubles as the Executive Secretary of Nasarawa State Muslim Pilgrims Welfare Board noted with admiration that all pilgrims from all states stayed equal number of days in Madinah and the NAHCON facilitated entrance into the Rawdah. “This is commendable, and the Forum encourage NAHCON to sustain this.

“The airlifts of the pilgrims from Nigeria to the KSA was commended and we hope and believe the inbound airlifts will be as good and smooth as the outbound,” he added.

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