908 Nigerian female pilgrims held in Saudi Arabia

The detention of hundreds of female Nigerian pilgrims heading to Mecca at Saudi
Arabia’s busiest airport over a rule requiring them to
travel with a husband or male relative is threatening
to bring a diplomatic dispute between the two
nations. Saudi authorities are holding 908 Nigerian women in
poor conditions “with some needing urgent medical
attention” at King Abdulaziz Airport in Jeddah and
threatened to deport them, the National Hajj
Commission of Nigeria said in a report submitted to
Nigerian lawmakers Wednesday. The report said female pilgrims who had landed in a
smaller airport in Medina had been unaffected. However, Fuwaiba Muhammad, a pilgrim, told an
Associated Press reporter at Mallam Aminu Kano
International Airport in the northern Nigerian city of
Kano that she had been deported Wednesday from
the Saudi Arabian city of Medina, along with dozens
of others. Uba Mana, a spokesman for the National Hajj
Commission, said no pilgrim had been deported by
Saudi authorities yet, but that the commission had
asked for female pilgrims who did not meet the
Saudi immigration officials’ requirements to
temporarily be brought back to Nigeria to avoid deportations. “Medina is a small airport,” Mana said, “and if we
allow people to get deported from there, the pilgrims
won’t be able to return to Saudi Arabia for another
five years, and by no fault of their own,” he said. This is the first time pilgrims have faced the
possibility of mass deportation over the male escort
issue, the commission has said. According to the
report, an agreement between Saudi Arabia and
Nigeria exempts female pilgrims from requiring a
male relative to escort them for the mandatory Hajj pilgrimage, which costs about $4,000 per person. Until now, state pilgrimage officials had been
allowed to stand in the place of a male relative or
husband. Muhammad, for instance, said that she
had been traveling with a Hajj official who is not her
relative. But Saudi authorities have proven much stricter this
year. They even stopped women who did travel with
their husbands. “Islam allows wives to bear the names of their
parents and not necessarily that of their husbands,”
the report argued. All able-bodied Muslims who can afford it are
expected to perform Hajj at least once in their lives,
leading people to go to great lengths to make the
trip. Some pilgrims sell their cows and jewelry and others
save for months or years to pay their own way to
Mecca. Muslim philanthropists and politicians in
Nigeria will typically sponsor some pilgrims
annually. Mana had said Monday that the escort situation had
been resolved through diplomatic channels, but the
commission’s report Wednesday said Saudi
authorities have “remained adamant.” The report said top Nigerian officials had held
meetings with Saudi officials in Nigeria and in Saudi
Arabia in a bid to come to reach a compromise. Nigeria’s Foreign Ministry sent a letter of
undertaking guaranteeing the return of the female
pilgrims after Hajj, it added, but Saudi authorities
still did not release them.