2017 Hajj: Bauchi air lifts 3,080 to Saudi Arabia

Despite the fear and anxiety expressed by a large chunk of the intending pilgrims from Bauchi State over their abil­ity to be air-lifted to Saudi Arabia for this year’s Hajj exercise, the last batch of 180 intending pilgrims were on Sunday airlifted to the Holy Land from the Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa Airport in Bauchi.

Fear had gripped the 2,201 intending pilgrims who were yet to be airlifted as of last Monday, even as they expressed fear that they might miss the spiritu­al exercise as they were yet to leave the shores of the country few days to the clo­sure of the Saudi airports to flights.

The last flight convey­ing the pilgrims from Bauchi, however, departed the airport at about 2:20 p.m on Sunday with 180 pilgrims from Bauchi, 13 from Gombe State, as well as 26 National Hajj Com­mission (NAHCO) offi­cials and some Hajj officials from Adamawa and Taraba States.

Also in the last batch are the Speaker, Bauchi State House of Assembly, who doubles as the state Amirul Hajj, Hon Kawuwa Shehu Damina and some mem­bers of the state Amirul Hajj Committee.

The flight was facilitated by the Emir of Bauchi, Alhaji Rilwanu Su­leiman Adams, who is the National Amirul Hajj for this year Hajj exercise.

Meanwhile, as of the time the last flight was taking off, two pregnant women were detected by officials of the Bauchi State Pilgrims Welfare Board, with one of them carrying a seven-month pregnancy, while the other is carrying six months pregnancy.

This brought to a total of 10 pregnant women from the state discovered during the airlift operation.

The two detected yester­day, like the previous eight, were promptly barred from embarking on the spiritual journey to Saudi Arabia to perform Hajj, which is the fifth pillar of the religion of Islam.