According to Premium Times, the Nigerian Senate ad-hoc committee on National Hajj Commission of Nigeria, NAHCON, and Nigerian Christian Pilgrims Commission, NCPC, has threatened to instruct the police to arrest the chairman of NAHCON, Abdullah Muktar, for ignoring letters of invitations from it.
The panel said this at its meeting on Thursday, when its chairman, Adamu Aliero, APC-Kebbi, explained that the NAHCON boss had refused to honour three different invitations sent to him to explain alleged extortion of pilgrims and exorbitant hajj fees.
"The NAHCON chairman, through his behaviour, has been 'a stumbling block' to the committee as far as the assignment given to it by the Senate is concerned. He has not honoured any of the invitations sent to him since August 7.
"In July, the very month, the committee was set up by the Senate, invitation letter was sent to the NAHCON boss to furnish us with required information on the Hajj exercise as regards total money to be spent by the commission, fees being charged per pilgrim among others but (he) complained that such information could not be supplied then due to preparation for the impending exercise.
"Consequently with the 2017 Hajj exercise over for close to two months now and the NAHCON chairman failing to honour the invitation of the committee and forwarding to it required documents for the assigned investigation, the committee will definitely invoke a relevant section of the 1999 constitution to compel his appearance."
The chairman announced that another letter of invitation would be sent to the NAHCON boss before invocation of the constitutional provisions that would enforce his appearance before the committee.
Some of the documents expected from the NAHCON boss by the committee are copies of the commission's 2017 Appropriation Act and details of funding.
Efforts to reach Uba Mana, the spokesperson for NAHCON via phone calls and text messages were unsuccessful as he did not reply to any of them.
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