NIGERIAN PILGRIMS RETURN HOME

TWO days after the completion of the hajj rites, Nigerian pilgrims have begun their journey back home.
The exercise kicked-off yesterday with a total of 505 pilgrims from Ogun State on board Med-View Airline as the first batch flight to depart Saudi Arabia. The batch was first to arrive at the holy land from Nigeria on October 17, 2010 when the Hajj Operation 2010 was launched in Lagos. It was gathered yesterday that about seven trips would be made to Nigeria through all the four accredited airlines - Kabo, Medview, Max and Meridian.
As at the press time yesterday, only two airlifts – Lagos (carrying Ogun pilgrims) and Katsina – had been recorded, while pilgrims from Kwara, Sokoto, Kano, Maiduguri, and Abuja zones were already undergoing screening at the Jeddah airport.
The airlift yesterday was in line with the principle of “first to come first to return” propounded by the Amirul Hajj and Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar III at the pre-Arafah meeting held on November 11, 2010 at the Jeddah office of the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON).
At the post-Arafah meeting held last Saturday evening also at the NAHCON office in Jeddah, this principle was reiterated by the Sultan with the appeal to pilgrims to exercise patience as due process would be strictly observed in the prosecution of the return plan.
“We have designed a plan for this exercise. We want to ensure that nobody goes against what we have planned. All the stakeholders at the meeting today (Saturday, November 20, 2010) have agreed to maintain the plan that we made to have a successful flight operation back home,” he said.
According to Sultan, “even the Saudi authorities are expecting a change of attitude from us, and they have realised how NAHCON has turned around the handling of hajj operations in recent time. Our pilgrims will be treated like their counterparts from other countries of the world. Before, we used to have a separate check-in counter away from everybody because of our rude behaviour in the past. But now, the Saudi authorities have seen some changes in our operation, due to adequate planning and discipline displayed by the pilgrims. With this return journey, we want to improve upon that as we keep on working hard to achieve a very high standard of operational ability in terms of moving our pilgrims from Nigeria to Saudi and vice versa.