Q: What is your name Sir?
A: Dr. Abdul Hakeem AbdulLateef, Commissioner for Home Affairs and Amirul Hajj for the year 2016.
Q: This year, for the first time in the history of hajj, there was no board, and before departing for Haj, people said it was not possible to run a pilgrimage of over two thousand (2,000) people without a board, but you chose to use co-ordinators and some staff of the ministry. What magic did you perform that the exercise turned out as one of the best Haj ever?
A: First and foremost, we give thanks to Almighty Allah. We have an able Governor, whose leadership style gives credence to the fact that there is nothing impossible before Almighty Allah. Using career officers this year was a big test because we knew that members of the board are more experienced because they have performed Haj on several occasions and they would have brought in their expertise and experience to do the job, but we decided to follow the directive of his excellency, the Governor, who believes that civil servants as career officers must be deployed to use their competence and commitment to achieving the goals of various M.D.A’s Agencies. We did a lot of trainings, re-trainings and also ensured that we were very objective in the selection of the coordinators. We neither used nepotism or favoritism; we decided to base it on merit. With the fear of God, once a leader understands that he is accountable to Almighty Allah, he will be doing everything as if Allah sees him. I was more conscious of my Lord, and considering the fact that this might be my last Haj because being in the office of a commissioner does not guarantee that you will be there next year. Even if the Governor wants you there and Allah says your time is up, you will go. So, I love to make this last Haj my best Haj; that was the driving spirit.
Secondly, it is my take on welfarism. One of the dividends of democracy that all you can do is to honour human beings, letting them know that there is a social contract between them and the government, and of which you are in a position of authority to make things good for them, make it better than they have ever witnessed it.
That was why I removed the garment of Commissioner when I was going on Haj I dropped that in the office and became my ordinary self, and I was ready to serve anybody. At the same time, I allowed access between myself and every pilgrim; therefore, if any coordinator is mandated to do anything and he does not do it well, the fact that the pilgrim had access to me puts that coordinator on her toes. Hence, they were monitored and supervised.
I want to give glory to Almighty Allah. Moreso, we had among the pilgrims, people who are well to do, who could decide to go with private tour operators, but who love to just reduce themselves to ordinary citizens and decided to go with us. They have enough experience; Alhaji Monzor Olowosago is one of them. He could afford to go in a luxurious manner, but he and other people like him decided to go ahead to reduce themselves to the lowest level and their prayers and their supports worked for us. What did we do to make the Haj stress-free for these people and other pilgrims? We don’t change a winning style; most of the things we had done in the past that worked for us, we did not re-invent them, and we did not change anything. We only did what we were used to. Lagos State had been known among all the thirty six (36) states in Nigeria for maintaining tent B plus; however, this year presented a very big challenge because of the fall in the value of the Naira. The Riyal is stable; dollar is stable, but Naira was unstable, and that became a big challenge. It’s like when you get approval based on 197 to a dollar, but now you have to execute based on over 300 and something to a dollar and that became a huge challenge, which with the help and support of the Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode, we were able to execute all our plans. We maintained and remained the only state that used the tent B plus. In fact, I heard that Kaduna State wanted to try the tent B plus, but because of the value of the Naira, they could not this year, but we thank God that Lagos State was able to do it.
Apart from that, we ensured that we paid for Dessert air conditioners to assist us at Arafa. You see that the weather became very hot. Apart from that, we bought extra fans. We paid about 250 thousand Riyal to procure 300 fans and public address system. Everything was expensive.
There are things, which ordinarily you can do at a cheaper prize, but because you are in another country, you have to sacrifice a lot.
We added a new dimension this year by ensuring that we took a good control of our kitchen to make sure that there were no crisis concerning our feeding system. If we had told pilgrims not to go with their foodstuffs, it would have amounted to us being over confident. When you are travelling abroad, you can never be too sure. Apart from that, we did not prevail on pilgrims to go without foodstuffs because people have different food and different taste; hence, there is no way one food will apply to everybody.
We will improve next year by having a committee that will supervise the caterers for better productivity. Also, next year, we are going to move a step ahead by considering the possibility of providing three square meals for the pilgrims daily. We have already done it twice, as well as ensuring that there are lots of fruits and water. We will also give people, in the new arrangement, the opportunity to state the type of food they like, we want pilgrims to now dictate the food we give them so that there can be varieties at the same time. This will enable them to know that during lunch, there can be 3 types of food based on the forms that people filled. Those who are vegetarians and those who are diabetic will also be considered in the new arrangement.
We want to lay more emphasis on this food arrangement in the next Haj exercise by having a committee of people with experience and then, we will ensure that such arrangement is not taken for granted. We will make sure that the food we give our pilgrims next year would be relevant to their nutritional needs. The Governor and the executive council approved the procurement of a new ambulance and before the end of this Haj, we were able to take delivery of a state of the art ambulance. We paid when we got there and they moved the ambulance from Daman to Jeddah and spent like about three (3) weeks to configure it to meet the standard and specification of Saudi Arabia. By their own specification, the ambulance must be spacious enough to enable a medical doctor to stand while treating someone in the ambulance. We are also going to fortify our medical team next year.
This year, the challenge we had was that the National Haj Commission came up with the idea that we should not go with a medical team at all and that we should team up with their own medical team; so, we gave them our medical delegation.
There were some itches though, because they were supposed to arrange visas for the doctors we gave them, but they did not. We eventually arranged the visas for them; though, we had paid over N10million into their account. They were also supposed to airlift them to Saudi Arabia but they did not. We airlifted those who had already paid to Saudi Arabia ourselves and it took a very long time before they could be paid their allowances.
Next year, we will make arrangement for the National Haj commission and we will still arrange double the size of the medical team for our pilgrims. We are also going to have all drugs.
We tried something before Haj. We told everyone to go to their medical doctors and do a medical screening as well as buy two sets of the drugs they were currently taking and they all complied.
But somebody came with an unfounded rumour that in Saudi Arabia, if you go with ordinary Panadol, they will arrest you; hence, most of the pilgrims dropped all the drugs they had bought. But this action took its toll on us which was very painful because when we got there, the few that we took were exhausted during the first two weeks. Next time, we want to ensure that there are two strategies. One, we will ask people to come with their own medications, because it actually takes them nothing to come along with their own medications and then two, we will buy half of our drugs in Nigeria and buy the remaining in Saudi Arabia. We will make a lot of provisions for that.
Q: Coming back to the issue of board, for the first time in history, the state did not have a board; what exactly happened? I know you made mention about it in Muna, where we talked for a while: Can you tell us exactly what happened because everything is being blamed on you. Was it that pilgrims said they didn’t a want board.