Abuja – Almost one year after the unfortunate demise of over 300 Nigerian pilgrims during the 2015 Hajj stampede in Saudi Arabia, the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON) on Monday in Abuja said that families of the deceased as well as those injured are yet to receive monetary compensation promised by the Saudi authorities.
Alhaji Abdullahi Mohammed, Chairman of the Commission, stated this on Monday during an investigative hearing on the role of NAHCON in the operation of the 2015 Hajj conducted by the House of Representatives.
Alhaji Mohammed disclosed that the commission was working hard to ensure that the compensation as promised was paid to the families of over 300 deceased and 12 injured victims of the incidents, which occurred in September 11, and 24 in Saudi Arabia.
His words: “Nigeria has not received 1 million Saudi Riyad and 500,000 Saudi Riyad that were promised as compensation for the dead and the injured respectively.
“We are working on it and as soon as we receive them, we will forward them to the families of the victims,” Mr. Mohammed told the panel.
He denied the speculation that majority of the deceased among the victims received a mass burial in Saudi.
“This is far from being the truth, there was no mass burial as each victim of the stampede was buried in his own grave marked and identified.
“Also the stampede did not occur as a result of the movement of Nigeria’s tent or as a result of the movement of VIPs as erroneously conceived,’’ he added.
Mohammed, however, advocated for more training to increase the capacity of officials handling the crowd during hajj.
“Officials involved in management should be multilingual so that they will be able to communicate with people of different nationalities and ensure more efficient crowd management,” he added.
The NAHCOM boss further disclosed that modalities had been put in place to guard against Nigerians participating in Hajj from becoming casualties in the future.
He said that the commission had adopted a more robust re-orientation programme for pilgrims at state and local government levels.
“Virtually all the state and local government officials have been engaging pilgrims on education on possible areas of danger and ways to avert them.
“The commission is also working with the ministry of health to establish a blood bank to be used in DNA profiling in case of any emergency.
“We also have to sensitise the state officials on the need for probing the pilgrims’ movement to avoid crowd areas and to observe the timing given to us by the relevant authorities.
“And we will introduce an electronic device that will help us in the management and tracking of the pilgrims’ location at all times,” Mohammed added.
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