Our attention has been drawn to the press release of the Hajj regulatory body on the 2025 Hajj preparation and the stand of AHUON as the umbrella body of the Tour Operators’. In as much as we do not have any issue with the release, because the Commission has clearly expressed their position to the public, which was either with the Tour Operators or not, nothing will stop them from proceeding with the Hajj preparation, but for the reason of clarity and public enlightenment.
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 5 different letters to the Commission, but it was only on the 24th of September, 2024 that the Commission dimmed 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. Clearly, the Commission is only after the money they want to collect from our members to use it to support their usual jamboree trips to Saudi Arabia. Talking about the Hajj calendar, we have four months to 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 which some are highlighted below:
REFUNDS
NAHCON is owing 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 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 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 was to be released two weeks after the conclusion of the Hajj. NAHCON has refuse to refund any of the companies that applied for it, instead they are asking for more money as increase to the last year’s deposit.
From the year 2004 to date the Commission has attested to have held our members funds through several engagements 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 N700million as 2% CBN charges. Our question is why the CBN will warehouse our money of over N2.7billion for 1 year without paying accrued interest on it, and same CBN charges us 2% on the transfers made on our operational fund.
Another important issue is that NAHCON has continually took from our 20,000 slots and issue same to other Government Agencies which end up disrupting our programme especially the Tent A (VIP tent) services in Muna and Arafat.
Every year the Ministry of Hajj allocated 1% of the total slots for each country as official visa for operators to facilitate their smooth movement in the Kingdom to serve the pilgrims. Since 2015 NAHCON has took ownership of our share and appropriate it as they wish. This in affect 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 N1million license to pay service fees per pilgrim each. Last year for example, we paid $100 per pilgrim as service charge, which amount to $1.4milliom (that is over N2.3billion 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 charging 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.
We wish to call upon the Commission to address issues instead of passing judgement on who performs Hajj 2025 and who will not perform. As for AHUON, only Allah whose call we answer to the Holy land can decide who performs Hajj 2025.
ABDULLATEEF EKUNDAYO YUSUF
NATIONAL PRESIDENT