Dr. Muhammed Sa’ad Abubakar III
The Sultan of Sokoto, Sa’ad Abubakar has called on President Goodluck Jonathan to start the process of stopping the Federal Government from financing pilgrimages for Nigerians.
The Sultan made the call during the presentation of the 2014 hajj report to President Goodluck Jonathan Wednesday in Abuja.
He called on the federal government to set up a technical committee to come up with strategies that will make pilgrimages self sustaining.
On the 2014 hajj exercise, the Sultan said it was successful in spite of the Ebola virus scare, which prevented the early airlifting of pilgrims.
He said, “A few of such problems could be taken to be the clamour for the self sustenance of hajj operations in Nigeria, which will make the Federal Government to spend virtually less or nothing in our quest to have an independent hajj operations in Nigeria.
“We have known about the report of the National Conference on the Federal Government dealing with hajj issues.
“We will like to suggest before the President takes a stand that maybe he should set up a small technical committee comprising of religious leaders of both Christians and Muslims to see how we can be self sustaining and independent.
“It will also see how the various statutes that put together these two commissions could be amended so that we could go ahead and start sourcing for funds”, he said.
The Sultan recalled that he brought up the issue in his 2011 report not knowing that it will be repeated in 2014.
“We had mentioned that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the NDIC should be encouraged to fast track the production of necessary guidelines and frameworks for the establishment of a hajj savings scheme.
“Such is yet to be taken very seriously and we believe if that is done, we might have a hajj commission that is self sustaining”, he added.
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