By Ibrahim Muhammed
The controversy over the inability of some 2024 hajj VIP private Tour Operators pilgrims to access ‘Tent A’ may not be over soon unless the undiluted details are brought open for an objective review of what went wrong. However, I understand that NAHCON and the relevant bodies in Saudi Arabia have instituted an internal inquiry to find out what went wrong.
There have been accusations and counter-accusations as to who is responsible for not executing what in Mina. Before hajj days, the Saudi Ministry of Hajj laid down procedures for securing Tent A for all hajj participating countries and set a deadline for payment.
AHUON, an umbrella body of private hajj Operators in Nigeria who are responsible for transporting and facilitating services for about 20,000 Pilgrims, has been calling for Investigation of NAHCON over 2024 hajj, especially on the challenges encountered on Tent A.
To be fair to them, Hajj Operators are primarily businessmen whose target is to make a profit by way of satisfying its customers. They have every right to raise issues whenever they think things are not working properly.
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However, some members of AHUON (not all) seem to be pressing for political solutions over an operational issue in which they participated fully. Conducting a wholistic investigation into the 2024 hajj requires unearthing the roles played by NAHCON and each Private Tour operator under the banner of AHUON and laying bare who failed to do what at the right time. If you are an outsider to Nigeria’s hajj ecosystem, you will be tempted to believe that NAHCON is the political party in power and that AHUON is the opposition political party – not knowing that one is the regulator while the other is a group of operators. That will be a subject for another day.
I will give more insight into the hajj politics that is currently souring the image of the Hajj and Umrah Industry in Nigeria. We owed it a responsibility to protect the coherence of hajj establishments (not any administration) – a task I have been doing since the establishment of NAHCON.
Back to the subject matter, I was informed that the Saudi Ministry of Hajj stopped accepting payments for upgrades from Tent D to Tent A – a system previously adopted by Hajj and Umrah Tour Operators worldwide to book VIP tents for their respective pilgrims.
My interaction with a Saudi-based official working under the Tent A arrangement revealed that many hajj operators encountered a hitch this year because of the new policy of not allowing upgrades from Tent D to Tent A.
Most of the Tour Operators were said to have secured their Visa via the Tent D category with the hope of upgrading it to Tent A.
The puzzle: Do the affected Operators eventually upgrade their Tent D visa category to Tent A before the arrival of their pilgrims? If not, do the affected tour operators inform their clients that ‘sorry, we couldn’t upgrade your payment to Tent A because of late payment? Was there any internal sabotage within the tour operators as being alleged The source informed that there is a private tour operator (name withheld) who claimed to have booked 46 Spaces in Tent A while the Saudi Hajj portal revealed that he booked for 6 spaces. We must also inquire whether there is a service failure or a failure on the part of the service provider to secure the tent as agreed.
The official informed me that most of the affected tour operators failed to provide the identity of pilgrims that were for Tent ‘A’ separately from those that were for Tent D as when due therefore creating a mix-up on the said day.
However, I wrote an analysis during the 2023 hajj titled “Hajj 2023 And The Constraints Of Managing Space At Mina” when the same challenges of Tents prompted Mina to highlight the reality of space management in Mina and how the marketing strategy of luxurious, conducive and promised comfortability in Mina is putting pressure on the hajj industry.
An extract from the analysis still suffices: “The name Mina is derived from the word with the root letters ma-na-ya, hence Mina means ‘to find’ or ‘to undergo test’ or ‘to be put to the test.’ Mina is connected to the words ‘tamannd’ and ‘manna’, which means ‘to hope for’ or ‘awaken a desire’.
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The spiritually applicable meaning of Mina in itself indicates that it is not a place for “desirable comfort”, but rather an area where our faith will be put to test in the quest of attaining Hajj mabrur.
Research was conducted in 2016 using the Mina Tent Distribution Algorithm (MTDA to better utilize the available capacity of Mina’s area in the best possible way with efficient use of the available resources. MTDA employs seven functions during the search process to find the best-fit accommodation for pilgrims in the available tents of Mina.
Experimental results revealed that MTDA achieves better performance compared with eight algorithm schemes in all experimental cases. The best result of MTDA was obtained by allocating 80% of the total number of pilgrims to over 76.2% of the total available accommodation space in the Mina area.
So, the best experimental result still did not project housing all the pilgrims in the tents. Yes, pilgrims paid to be housed inside the tents, but this is when reality overshadows expectations.
To provide more space for pilgrims, a new multi-story building has been erected in Mina within street 502. The new multi-story building can host 11,000 pilgrims. It was designed so that a room can accommodate approximately 25 to 30 pilgrims. There are a total of five floors in each building. Each building has 4 elevators, of which 3 elevators are for pilgrims and 1 is for services.
The agitation to change service providers may not be the ultimate solution to the challenges in Mina as being made to believe. Indonesia, India, and Malaysia have a different service provider from Nigeria.
In this year’s hajj, the Indonesia House of Representatives (DPR’s) Hajj Monitoring Team said the findings of the Indonesian Hajj pilgrims’ tents in Mina resembled those of “refugee camps.”
In a preliminary report published by antaranews, the team said that “high numbers of male and female pilgrims had to stay in similar tightly packed tents without gender segregation. Adiputra pointed out that several pilgrims, notably the elderly, opted to stay outside to avoid the packed tents with a capacity of 80 pilgrims forced to accommodate around 1,200 pilgrims.
Likewise, a report published by the Indian Free Press Journal and republished by the Hajj Reporters on the 20th of June shows that Indian pilgrims who were part of the annual five-day Haj pilgrimage complained of lack of cleanliness in the camps, inadequate food, and overcrowding. Indian Hajis took to social media to complain about the woeful conditions in the camps. One pilgrim from Telangana said in a video released on social media. “We were treated worse than beggars
Shams Chowdhury of Mumbai-based Haj Pilgrims Social Justice Group said “You can’t blame the Haj Committee and the government for this, because there were more pilgrims this time. It was not just the Indians who suffered, but pilgrims from Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Turkey faced similar difficulties,”
Given the above, we can agree that other countries had similar experiences this year.
During the 2023 Hajj, the challenges of space that affected virtually all Hajj participating countries were mostly within the Tent ‘D’ category. Countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Nigeria have to complain and draw the attention of their respective hajj service providers to the inadequacy of tents. It was as a result of the 2023 experience that the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah came up with a policy of allocating tent space based on first come first serve.
Despite the relative lateness in our pre-hajj preparations, the provision of tent space within the D category this year was far better than the previous year. The Nigerian Hajj service provider, Ithraa Alkhair, was said to have made provision for almost 12,000 extra space for Nigerian Pilgrims. A commendable feat, I must admit. The challenge in VIP tents should not be a tool to measure the performance of entire hajj operations, especially in Mashair areas
Now that Saudi Arabia has rolled out the 2025 hajj calendar, I hope that we will review all the major lapses and take proactive measures to avoid a repeat of 2025 hajj operations.
…Mohammed is National Coordinator, Independent Hajj Reporters, +2348037024356
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