Hajj Fiasco!!!

Aliu Mahama Kills Hundreds Of Dreams For Political Expediency

From a distance, or from a cursory glance, it would seem as if the inability of thousands of our Moslem brothers and sisters to make it to the Holy Land of Mecca in order to reach the highest point in Islam was just another mishap; but focussing the lenses closer on it, one soon finds that there is more to it than meets the ordinary eye.

The Ghanaian Lens can authoritatively reveal that what happened to the disappointed would-be Moslem pilgrims last December, happened because of what is going to happen later this year when the NPP goes to congress to elect its flagbearer.

What resulted in the inability of the disappointed would-be pilgrims to meet their religious aspirations, and which virtually turned them into helpless internally displaced persons or refugees at the Kotoka International Airport for days, was a result of a serious power play by Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama.

The Ghanaian Lens can reveal that as the race for who would lead the NPP gets hotter, the 2006 Hajj became a pedestal from which Aliu Mahama sought to jump, in order to sour above the almost two dozen other people who are interested in leading the NPP.

An Alhaji himself, the Vice President is not unaware of the importance that Moslems attach to the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and being as at now the only Moslem in serious contention to lead the NPP, he took advantage of his position as the number two man in the land to curry favours with the Moslem activists in the NPP, with a view to gaining some undue advantage over his competitors. To this end while would-be pilgrims who had long confirmed their reservations were at the airport expecting to be transported to Mecca, the Vice President, at the very last minute, decided to load Moslem NPP activists onto the planes. Thus, those who had long confirmed their reservations, had to be dropped at the last minute for party apparatchiks, concubines, yes-men and bootlickers to make the trip to Mecca.

In fact, The Ghanaian Lens is aware of at least one non-Moslem female NPP activist (name withheld for now) from …… constituency, who was among the persons Vice President Aliu Mahama brought at the last minute to replace other pilgrims who had long confirmed their reservations.

After paying over 20 million cedis (excluding incidental expenses) per person in expectation of making a pilgrimage to the Holy land to reaffirm their faith in Islam and commune with their Maker, hundreds of innocent unsuspecting would-be Moslem pilgrims had their cherished dreams shattered just because Vice President Aliu Mahama allowed his inordinate desire to be what he may not have been carved out to be to override everything else.

In the end, the disappointed would-be pilgrims, most of whom had travelled to Accra from very far away places fully expectant of making the pilgrimage this year, were virtually abandoned under makeshift tents at the Afgo Terminal at the Kotoka International Airport.

Dispirited and dejected, the disappointed would-be pilgrims held out hope that by some miracle a flight would be provided for them to make the pilgrimage. Alas, their hopes were in vain.

Upon hearing of the plight of the stranded would-be pilgrims, Prof. John Evans Atta-Mills, the leader and Flagbearer of the NDC, on Friday, December 22, 2006 paid them a visit in the company of Hon. Mohammed Mumuni, Hon. Mahama Ayariga, and other NDC bigwigs and commiserated with them.

Prof. Mills presented the dejected would-be pilgrims with some food items and drinking water. He also made some tents available to them.

One of the stranded would-be pilgrims, Halidu Haruna, was full of praise for Prof. Mills for coming to the aid of the abandoned would-be pilgrims.

Speaking to The Ghanaian Lens, Halidu had this to say, “Prof. Mills’ visit really awakened some of us from the dejection that our disappointment plunged us into. He spoke to us and gave us inspiration to look to the future. At that point that was all that some of us needed; somebody to listen to our story and offer hope and inspiration, and it was only Prof. Mills who felt our pain and anxiety and provided us with these.”

Speaking on the mood at the temporary camp of the would-be pilgrims, Halidu said, “it was nothing I have ever experienced. I have seen football fans become dejected after their teams were defeated, but the dejection that followed our disappointment was worse than that. It is not an experience that I would wish upon anybody. I pray Allah, the Most Merciful, to grant that never again should any Moslem suffer the fate we suffered.”

“It was humiliating enough having to end our intended pilgrimage at the outskirts of the Kotoka International Airport, but it became even worse when nobody seemed to care about our plight. That is why we are most grateful to Prof. Mills,” Halidu stressed.

“We are most grateful to him for the food, water and shelter. But most of all, we are grateful for the hope and inspiration he brought us that day. We pray that Allah, the Compassionate, would continue to fill him with wisdom and foresight so that in 2008 Ghanaians would see the goodness and fellow-feeling in him so that they would overwhelmingly give him the mandate to lead this country,” Halidu prayed.