Rabiu Omaku, Makkah
The last straw that broke the camel’s back on the part of the Nasarawa State Muslim Pilgrims Welfare Board is their effort to identify missing pilgrims who perished in Jamrat, as this effort is seem to have been a defeated battle .
The inaction and lack of commitment by the board to distributes pilgrims identification card is an Achilles heel causing panic amongst those having relatives as pilgrims, this medium investigation unveiled that 52 percents of pilgrims do not have identification cards, this is among the hardship for security personnel at the camp and pilgrims that did not have I.D cards in their possessions.
The nagging question begging for answer from the board is it this, for how long will the I.D card be distributed to their holders? The steps taking by the board may not yield a fruitful result, reason being that majority of the pilgrims are not indigenes of the state and for this reason some are not known by core indigents who easily identify themselves through their various Local Governments.
Scores were missing from their tent in Mina after the ugly incident that occurred at Jamrat of Aqabah, the stone pillar of Satan. Information available revealed that vast population of pilgrims especially the aged has since returned to their hotel rooms in Makkah, while women being the weaker ones hired associates to carry out the exercise in proxy.
A stitch in time saves nine, Is now time for the board and the Amirul Hajj team to work as a team to ensure a hitch-free exercise, If this approach is taken sky would be the starting point to those at the helms of affairs. No doubt a lot of change is being expected from those at the echelon of affairs especially in the area of provision of buses to pilgrims.
The improvement is worthy of emulation particularly with the up to-date bus not like before where the buses were without Air-conditions were provided to pilgrims considering the harsh weather in Makkah and Medinah. One of the bitter experiences was the movement of pilgrims from Medinah to Makkah, some of those in bus 8 shared their bitter experienced with our reporter.
“Our A/C malfunctioned and this took several hours to have it restored it, Infact the authority has to change another vehicle for us, We are the last among the 10 busses that left Medinah to Makkah, he further said that in the bus 8 was the director campaign of Taal campaign organization, Musa Illu, The General Manager of Nasarawa Broadcasting Service, Yusuf Musa, Sabo Keana, Nura Ado Abdullahi of Precious Fm Lafia and amongst others.” While my personal experience was that the bus that tranported us from Makkah to Medinah, was not road worthy.
Some pilgrims expressed satisfaction with the new brand busses provided to Nasarawa pilgrims from Arafat to Muzdalifa, Again an eyewitness opined that Musa Illu was sighted monitoring and sharing food to pilgrims at Mina, This is a welcome development if everybody would face the responsible bestow on them squarely and stop politicizing the entire exercise.
It is now time that the board should appoint people with good characters as Local Government coordinators to ensure a hitch-free exercise.
