Hajj: FCT to sanction intending pilgrims who miss flight

The Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Muslim Pilgrims Welfare Board is to sanction intending pilgrims who deliberately miss their flight schedules during the airlift for this year’s Hajj.

The Director of the board, Mallam Abubakar Adamu Evuti, disclosed this at a meeting with Islamic scholars mobilised to conduct the education and orientation exercise for the 2023 intending pilgrims in the FCT.

Mallam Evuti said the attitude of some intending pilgrims who refused to come out for airlifting would no longer be tolerated as such behaviour destabilised the arrangement for the operation.

He disclosed that the board would introduce measures against such behaviour, among which was that each intending pilgrim would be given a chance to select the flight he or she intended to travel on to Saudi Arabia.

He stressed that any intending pilgrim who refused to come out for the airlift after being scheduled in such flight would be sanctioned in line with international travel standards.

He also disclosed that the board was committed to conducting the education and orientation exercise in phases using seven languages: English, Hausa, Yoruba, Nupe, Ganagana, Ebira and Fulfulde.

In his remarks, the leader of the scholars and Chairman of the Committee of Imams in the FCT, Sheikh Tajuddeen Bello Adegun, pledged to do everything possible to ensure that the intending pilgrims from the territory got the basic rudiments of Hajj that would guide them to achieve acceptable an exercise in line with Islamic injunctions and the teachings of the noble Prophet Muhammad (SAW).