The last home-bound flight conveying the last batch of Nigeria pilgrims from Saudi Arabia arrived in the country on Tuesday, with pilgrims from Benue State and some officials of the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) through Max Air, marking the end of 2011 hajj operation.
This is just as more than 40 Nigerian pilgrims died during this year’s hajj.
The commissioner in charge of planning, research, statistics and information, Dr. Saleh Okenwa revealed this when he addressed newsmen at NAHCON office in Abuja yesterday. He said Nigeria was able to conclude the airlift of 99,000 pilgrims who performed this year’s hajj back to the country before the due date, thereby beating the deadline set by Saudi authorities and the one NAHCON set for itself.
“NAHCON was able to transport all our pilgrims back home five days before the targeted deadline of December 11 set by NAHCON and nine days before the general dead line of December 15 given by Saudi authority to all the countries of the world to leave the kingdom,” he said.
The commissioner described this achievement as a success to hajj operation in Nigeria and explained that they were able to achieve this because more slots were allocated to Nigeria after most of the countries had left the kingdom.
He added that the initial slow pace of movement of pilgrims back to Nigeria was due to the fact that more than 159 countries, Nigeria included, were all leaving from the same airport and, in order not to overstretch the facilities at the airport, Saudi authorities had to spread all the flights across the period of one month.