The war of words between the Association for Hajj and Umrah in Nigeria and National Hajj Commission of Nigeria rages on as the umbrella body of the private operators for the annual pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia has slammed the regulatory body, accusing it of misleading the public with the claim of seamless communication with it.
AHUON said this in a rejoinder signed by its National President, Abdullateef Ekundayo Yusuf, and sent to The Eagle Online on Saturday.
The organisation maintained that NAHCON “should be sincere enough to address the several pending issues” it has presented to the Commission.
NAHCON had on Friday in a report expressed concern on the directive by AHUON to its members to suspend participation in the upcoming 2025 Hajj operations, stressing that the Commission was taking all necessary steps needed to attend to demands of the private operators.
The AHUON boss, in his rejoinder, titled: “Re: With or without AHUON Arafat will hold,” countered NAHCON.
Yusuf said: “Let’s start with the claim of NAHCON that there was a continuous communication with the AHUON. This is misleading because from June this year when the Hajj 2024 was concluded, AHUON have written five different letters to the Commission, but it was only on the 24th of September, 2024 that the Commission deemed it necessary to respond to just one, and that letter, was short of addressing our numerous and rightful demands.
“The Association requested for a meeting with the Commission on the 23rd of June 2024, at their Makkah office, but they turned down our request, we had to wait till the 10th of September, 2024 when they decided to invite us. How can NAHCON said they are open to dialogue with the Association?
“NAHCON has chosen to mislead the public about the Saudi 2025 Hajj calendar, to portray AHUON as the body frustrating the preparation of the upcoming Hajj. Nigeria has a total of 95,000 slots allocation, out of which Tour Operators have only 20,000. Why has the Commission been so perturbed about the preparation of the 20,000 as against the 75,000 of the State Pilgrim Boards.”
AHUON challenged that with its conduct, it clearly showed that the “Commission was only after the money they wanted to collect from our members to use it to support their usual jamboree trips to Saudi Arabia”.
Yusuf said further: “Talking about the Hajj calendar, we have four months until the start of issuance of the Hajj visa which will run for another two good months and end on April 18th. Therefore, the Commission has ample time to deal with the matter at hand if they really want.
“For the records we want to let the public understand that we are not in any way denying the right of the Commission as regulator to go on with 2025 Hajj preparation, they have 75,000 pilgrims to worry about. However, as it affects our members, the Commission should be sincere enough to address the several pending issues we presented to it…”
According to its head, AHUON’s demands include refunds.
Yusuf highlighted: “NAHCON owes our members over N15 billion. It was the practice of the Saudi government after each Hajj operation to refund money to Countries on three grounds. Number one, services paid by pilgrims but not rendered, number two services paid for but poorly rendered to the agreed standard, number three tent security deposits.
“Our members are owed all these categories of money from the 2022 Hajj to date by the commission. They confirmed in our meeting with them that they have received the sum of 20,000,000.SR (Twenty Million Saudi Riyals) of such refund from the Saudi authority since December last year, but they are yet to formally notify us talk less of agreeing on the modalities of the refund payment. Even this 20,000,000.00.SR if not for the investigation EFCC conducted on the Commission, we wouldn’t have known that it has been paid since December, 2023, we only got to know through media reports, before they now confirmed it to us at our last meeting. What stopped them from calling the Tour Operators since December 2023 to come forward to claim their money? They kept quiet.
“Last Hajj operation NAHCON has received and warehoused over N2.7 Billion as caution deposit from our members. By our agreement with the Commission, the funds were to be released two weeks after the conclusion of the Hajj. NAHCON has refused to refund any of the companies that applied for it, instead they are asking for more money as an increase to last year’s deposit.
“From the year 2004 to date the Commission has attested to have held our members’ funds through several engagements, for example unused visa, excess payments, Umrah deposit etc., and have not shown any sign of refunding such funds. In fact, our agreement with the Commission to publish the list of the companies under this category since last year have not been met. It is worth noting that many of our members have passed on waiting for these refunds.
“In addition to the above, for many years now some of our members have millions of Saudi Riyals balances in their Saudi accounts (IBAN), which they can’t access. For over three years now we have engaged the Commission to facilitate the release of those funds to our members, but it refuses to do anything about the issue.
“Apart for the above refund issues, we requested the Commission to accept Bank guarantee which their Acts permits, in place of cash deposit considering the perennial challenges we have been facing with refund. It is worth noting that our members receive nothing as income from the amount we deposit annually. In fact, during the last Hajj our members paid CBN and NAHCON over N700 million as 2% CBN charges. Our question is why the CBN will warehouse our money of over N2.7 billion for 1 year without paying accrued interest on it, and the same CBN charges us 2% on the transfers made on our operational fund.
“Another important issue is that NAHCON has continually taken from our 20,000 slots and issued the same to other Government Agencies which end up disrupting our programme especially the Tent A (VIP tent) services in Muna and Arafat.
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“Every year the Ministry of Hajj allocated 1% of the total slots for each country as an official visa for operators to facilitate their smooth movement in the Kingdom to serve the pilgrims. Since 2015 NAHCON has taken ownership of our share and appropriated it as they wish. This in effect negatively affects the way we discharge our responsibilities to our Pilgrims during Hajj.
“NAHCON made it mandatory to our members apart from the cost of application form and N1 Million licence to pay service fees per pilgrim each. Last year for example, we paid $100 per pilgrim as service charge, which amounted to $1.4million (that is over N2.3 billion at the current market rate). We beg to ask, what services does NAHCON render to private Tour Operators’ pilgrims, and is NAHCON a revenue generating institution? Why charge in dollars?
“These are some of the issues at stake between AHUON and NAHCON which the Commission has refused to address over a period of time. There are other operational matters which are not yet ripe for public domain.”
Following this, AHUON has called on NAHCON to address issues instead of passing judgement on who performs Hajj 2025 and who will not perform, declaring that as far as its members are concern, “only Allah whose call we answer to the Holy land can decide who performs Hajj 2025.”
The Eagle Online reports that the raging controversies are being compounded by the delay in screening and confirmation by the Senate of the newly-appointed NAHCON Chair, Prof Abdullahi Sale.
The situation has made many stakeholders express worries about the serious negative impacts of the ensuing challenges on the upcoming Hajj exercise in the country.
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