The Makkah Mission And The Night Encounter (1)

In my last outing in this column, I took readers through the Makkah Mission — the assignment given to the leadership of Nigerian tour operators to select the Saudi service providers who would serve their pilgrims for Hajj 2027. I told how a formidable delegation of the Board of Trustees, the National Executive Council and the five lead companies travelled to the Kingdom; how they summoned four of the twenty-seven companies enlisted by the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria; and how, one after another, they sat with Jabal Omar, Manasek Al Mashaer, Ithraa Al-Jood and Rawaf Mina.

That account, however, stopped at the point where most of the delegation had returned home. It did not tell the whole story. There was an epilogue — and in many ways it is the most consequential chapter of the entire mission. Over the next two weeks, therefore, I shall take readers into what I can only call the night encounter: two meetings held in my room at the Address Hotel, Makkah, with Ithraa Al-Jood and Manasek Mashaer, at a time when the pilgrimage of the team had ended and only a handful of us remained in the holy city.

Let me begin with how it came about.

The National Executive Council had mandated the two Single Points of Contact to formally engage both service providers and to demand of them a precise statement of what they would render in Tent A, Zone 5 having been declared unfit for the standard our pilgrims expect in the Masha’ir. Ordinarily, such an engagement would have been a collective undertaking. But the intervention of the association’s President did not yield the desired result at that time, and no one contacted me so that we might go together. By Monday, 5 October 2026, I was the only member still remaining in Makkah. I made an effort to reach Brother Lukman of Al-Hujjaj when I heard he might still be around, but he was already at the airport, on his way home.

And so, rather than allow the mandate to lapse, I summoned both companies to meet me — each at a different time — in my room at the Address Hotel. I considered it more honourable, and more consistent with our standing, to have them come to me than to chase them at their offices. What follows is therefore a first-hand account.

The first to come was Ithraa Al-Jood, and what I learned that night reordered my understanding of the entire engagement. To appreciate it, however, readers must first understand one institution: Kidana. Much of what our operators have suffered, and much of what they have misapprehended, turns upon it.

Kidana Development and Investment Company is the executive arm of the Royal Commission for the City of Makkah and the Holy Sites. It was established as the first closed joint-stock company owned by that Commission, with its headquarters in Mina, and it is, in substance, the principal developer and administrator of the Holy Sites. It builds, maintains and operates the infrastructure of the Masha’ir — the tent city, the modern two-storey tents, the Kidana Al-Wadi Towers, the water and climate projects, and the emergency hospital in Mina. Critically for our purposes, it is Kidana, and not any private service provider, that controls the allocation of accommodation in Mina and Arafah, and that determines who may occupy what, and upon what terms. This single fact explains a great deal of the difficulty our operators experienced in the last Hajj.

Mr Zuheir Binjabi represented Ithraa. He had hoped to come with a team from his company, but on account of the short notice he could not assemble one, and so came alone. He arrived at 9 p.m., and we sat until about midnight.

The central matter I put to him was the claim — arising from our earlier engagement with the four companies — that among them only Rawaf Mina had access to the Kidana building, and that this gave Rawaf a decisive advantage in VIP services. Mr Zuheir’s answer was as instructive as it was surprising. No company, he said, owns any building in Mina. The facility we refer to as Kidana was built by Al-Rajhi, yet even Al-Rajhi cannot exert control over it. The same holds for the VIP tents and villas in Zone 5, which Ithraa itself built; Ithraa nevertheless has no right over the property beyond what Kidana dictates regarding who rents it and at what rate. A company may, with permission, finance and complete a structure, but the structure is surrendered to Kidana, which holds sole control over it, including its letting to qualified tenants. It is therefore wrong for any player in the industry to assert ownership of anything in the Masha’ir. A block may be allotted to one company this Hajj and, for reasons best known to the authorities, to a different company the next. Every registered Hajj company in the Kingdom is entitled to apply for, and receive, any facility in the Masha’ir. The facility belongs to no one company.

Mr Zuheir then turned to the question of occupancy. On how many pilgrims may occupy a tent, he said the number would be according to our own desire — twenty, ten, eight or six — for it is the price that determines how many stay in a tent. This departs materially from the impression given at our earlier meeting at Ithraa’s office, where it appeared that the price was static regardless of the number of occupants. It is, of course, simple commercial sense, though I did not voice it, that in a tent of twenty, the price must reflect the rate per space occupied, the common services, the feeding, the bedding and, in some cases, the transport. If fewer pilgrims occupy the tent, the services consumed are fewer, but the space itself is more generously held, and the costing must adjust accordingly. There can be no justification for paying an identical sum per tent whether occupants are few or many.

As to the Zone 5 facility our team had inspected and found wanting, Ithraa accepts that it does not meet the standard our VIP pilgrims expect. Since our operators will not take it, Ithraa undertakes to compete with other companies for the Kidana building, or to partner with whichever company secures it, so as to serve our VIP pilgrims. Not securing the building directly, Mr Zuheir insisted, will not make Ithraa’s rate higher than any other company’s; the price, he repeated, is not the issue.

He closed with a plea. The aim of Ithraa, he said, is to have the opportunity of having its brothers and sisters back to their home, and to be given the chance, once again, to serve the entire body of Nigerian tour operators’ pilgrims in both Tent 1 and Tent 3. Our relationship, he told me, is not business; it is brotherhood and a common interest in serving the pilgrims with the best of service in the Masha’ir.

That was the first of the two encounters. Next week, in the second and concluding part, I shall take readers into the meeting with Manasek Mashaer, which began after midnight and lasted into the small hours; the extraordinary disclosures it brought forth, including a building in the First Zone that could transform VIP services for our pilgrims; and what all of it means for the Nigerian pilgrim as we await the guidelines of the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah for Hajj 2027.