*Photo: Amb. Ismail Abba Yusuf
Chairman/CEO, NAHCON*
STAKEHOLDERS’ SUMMIT ON POST-2026 HAJJ REVIEW AND THE NAHCON REFORM AGENDA
OPENING ADDRESS
Delivered by
Ambassador Ismail Abba Yusuf
Chairman/CEO, National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON)
NAF Conference Centre, Abuja • Wednesday, 15th July 2026
Bismillahir-Rahmanir-Raheem.
PROTOCOL
His Excellency, Senator Kashim Shettima, GCON, Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and Special Guest of Honour;
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Distinguished Senator Abubakar Sani Bello;
The Chairman, House Committee on Hajj Affairs, Honourable Jafaru Mohammed Ali;
The Honourable Minister of State, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Sola Enikanolaiye;
The Honourable Minister of State, Federal Capital Territory, Dr. Mariya Mahmoud Bunkure;
His Eminence, Alhaji Muhammad Sa’ad Abubakar, CFR, mni, the Sultan of Sokoto, President-General of the Nigerian Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, and Chairman of this occasion;
Royal Fathers, religious leaders, captains of the aviation, hospitality and health sectors here present;
His Excellency, Yousef bin Mohammed Al-Balawi, Ambassador of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to the Federal Republic of Nigeria;
Our distinguished Keynote Speaker, Professor Is-haq Olanrewaju Oloyede;
Executive Chairmen and Secretaries of State Muslim Pilgrims Welfare Boards, Agencies and Commissions;
Presidents and members of the Associations of Licensed Private Tour Operators;
Gentlemen of the Press, distinguished ladies and gentlemen.
Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh, and a very good morning to you all.
It is with profound gratitude to Allah, Subhanahu wa Ta’ala, and a deep sense of duty that I welcome you to this Stakeholders’ Summit to review the 2026 Hajj, as we commence arrangements for 2027. Before the memories fade and the lessons cool, we have gathered the entire Hajj family under one roof — regulators, State Boards, private tour operators, airlines, medical teams, our legislative partners and our esteemed Saudi friends — for the purpose of introspection.
Permit me to begin my address express the Commission’s gratitude to His Excellency, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, whose unwavering support gave the 2026 Hajj operation the political backing it required, and to His Excellency the Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, GCON, whose personal attention to Hajj matters has been a constant source of strength. I thank His Eminence the Sultan of Sokoto, whose spiritual leadership remains the compass of the Nigerian Ummah, and the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, through the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah, for the exceptional hospitality extended to Nigerian pilgrims throughout the 1447AH season.
This Summit should be summit should be seen as a forum for accountability. The modest achievements we recorded must be interrogated for how they can be institutionalised; every shortcoming must be named without embellishment and matched with a remedy. That is what we owe the Nigerian pilgrim.
The 1447AH/2026 Hajj recorded some milestones: There are things we achieved and there are things we must fix. We recorded an orderly airlift, improved visa processing through the Nusuk platform, better medical services, and closer coordination between the Commission, the State Boards and our licensed tour operators. Our pilgrims performed their rites in safety, and they returned home in peace. Alhamdulillah.
We will not hide behind our successes. The season also exposed failures that this Summit must confront frontally — The circumvention of medical screening checks by 109 pilgrims, lapses in catering services in the Masha’er, gaps in service-provider compliance, avoidable pressure points in accommodation and transportation, and weaknesses in some of our own monitoring and enforcement instruments. In the weeks since the season closed, the Commission initiated rigorous post-season reconciliation with Saudi service providers, invoking the accountability clauses of our signed agreements. Let every service provider, foreign or domestic, take heed. The era in which contractual failure carried no consequence is over. Pilgrims must receive relief for every poor service rendered. Performance will henceforth, determine patronage.
Distinguished guests, the deeper purpose of this Summit is not merely to review one season, but to reposition an industry. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is executing, under Vision 2030, the most ambitious transformation of pilgrimage administration in modern history. The Pilgrim Experience Program has digitised the entire Hajj value chain — visas, contracts, accommodation, transportation and scheduling — through the Nusuk and Masar platforms. The Kingdom is expanding capacity towards hosting millions more pilgrims and Umrah performers annually, and it is doing so on the strict currency of data, compliance and service quality.
The implication for Nigeria is inescapable: We must align with this new architecture to be able to negotiate from position of strength — securing better quotas, earlier contracting windows, premium service tiers and priority scheduling. We must jettison analogue habits, late remittances and improvised planning or risk being priced and pushed to the margins. Nigeria, as one of the countries with the largest Hajj pilgrims’ population on earth, cannot afford to be a spectator to this transformation. We must be a strategic partner in it.
That is the crux and focus of the new leadership at NAHCON: to rebuild our processes so that they speak the language of Vision 2030, This includes:
Early preparation by imbibing the culture of early planning and enforcement of a predictable Hajj calendar;
Developing a single National Pilgrimage Digital Platform for Hajj and Umrah registration, payment traceability and provision of all pilgrims services.
Enforcing service standards and professional accountability at every level, from the Commission through the State Boards to the smallest tour operator.
Strengthening financial transparency and cost governance;
Navigate towards a decentralised operations with strong central oversight. State Pilgrims Welfare Boards and licensed operators must take charge of pilgrims services while NAHCON retains regulatory responsibilities and oversight.
Comprehensive Umrah coordination and oversight by treating Umrah, henceforth, as a core statutory and consumer-protection responsibility.
Professionalisation and capacity building through the Hajj Institute of Nigeria as the national training and certification hub for Hajj and Umrah.
Enhance pilgrims’ education by adopting a standard national curriculum in major Nigerian languages covering Hajj and Umrah rites and logistics.
Your Excellency, Ladies and Gentlemen.
Hajj has become in operational terms, the largest recurring exercise in group travel, mass events management and crowd dynamics on the planet. The world’s leading pilgrim-sending nations now run their operations the way global aviation and mega-event industries do: seat inventories are managed with airline-grade precision; pilgrim movements in the Mashaer are sequenced through scientific scheduling; crowd flows at the Jamaraat are modelled with real-time data and simulation; feeding, accommodation and health services are governed by measurable service-level agreements, not by goodwill or political leverage.
Nigeria must domesticate these disciplines. Our reform agenda therefore prioritises: professional certification and training for Hajj managers and officials; data-driven pilgrim registration and allocation; strict compliance with Tafweej and Jamaraat scheduling as both a safety obligation and a religious duty of order; performance-based frameworks for monitoring our officials and our service providers alike; and year-round planning that begins for 2027 not next year, but this quarter. Indeed, the Commission has already directed all State Boards and Tour Operators to commence preparations for the 1448AH/2027 Hajj.
The plenary sessions before you have been designed to interrogate the full cycle of our operations. I charge every panellist and every participant: speak with candour, disagree with respect, and recommend with precision. We do not need speeches that flatter us, rather, we need constructive engagements that correct us and resolutions that bind us.
The outcome of this Summit will feed directly into the Commission’s roadmap for the 2027 Hajj and into our engagements with the Saudi Ministry of Hajj and Umrah. What you resolve here will not be filed away; it will be implemented, tracked and reported.
The Nigerian pilgrim is not asking for luxury. He is asking for order. She is asking for dignity. They are asking that the sacrifice of a lifetime be met with the seriousness of a nation. That is a reasonable request, and under this reform agenda, it is a promise we intend to keep.
On behalf of the Board, Management and Staff of the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria, I thank His Excellency the Vice President for graciously accepting to declare this Summit open, and I thank each of you for honouring our invitation. May Allah, Subhanahu wa Ta’ala, accept the Hajj of our pilgrims, reward your service to the Ummah, and continue to bless the Federal Republic of Nigeria and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Thank you, and Assalamu alaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatuh.
Ambassador Ismail Abba Yusuf
Chairman/Chief Executive Officer
National Hajj Commission of Nigeria (NAHCON)