Sheikh IC Quaye
Details are beginning to emerge about how the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) allegedly used huge sums of money belonging to the Hajj Board to finance its foot-soldiers and protocols to Saudi Arabia for Hajj in 2016.
This is coming on the heels of denials by a former member of the Hajj Board, Alhassan Suhyini on claims made by the current board Chairman, Sheikh IC Quaye that immediate-past managers of the board, under the chairmanship of Abdul Rauf Tanko Ibrahim, incurred a whopping $30 million debt.
The Sheikh Quaye had expressed concern that the debt could adversely affect the operations of this year’s Hajj.
Hajj Board chairman, in an interview with Joy Fm, said the debt was partly caused by a long protocol list that escorted pilgrims to Mecca in 2016.
But Mr. Suhyini, who admitted that the board incurred some debt, denied incurring the said $30 million debt, moving on to challenge Vice President Bawumia to champion the cause of Muslims.
“It is not true that the Hajj Board left a debt to that tune. What we know of is that government decided to subsidize the Hajj operations. It decided to give Hajj Board a special exchange rate which the government made up the difference for,” he explained.
Cause Of Debts
However, DAILY GUIDE’s findings suggest that the debts were incurred not as a result of government subsidizing the 2016 hajj, but rather because it funded the trips of its foot-soldiers and a tall-list of some protocol to Mecca during the period under review to the expense of pilgrims who paid their monies to embark on the holy trip.
According to sources, the NDC Government then headed by former President Mahama, in a desperate attempt to please its foot-soldiers ostensibly to use their services for the 2016 elections after reportedly neglecting most of them immediately after the 2012 elections, decided to send some of them to Mecca in 2016 for the pilgrimage as a way of soothing their frustrations.
In addition to the numerous foot-soldiers, the then ruling party also reportedly replaced some of the pilgrims who have genuinely paid to embark on the trip with a large protocol, who purportedly escorted some of the pilgrims who made their way to the hajj.
As a result, about 452 pilgrims who genuinely made their payment for the trip in 2016 using their hard-earned cash, DAILY GUIDE understands, could not travel that year, leaving a huge backlog for the Sheikh Quaye board.
The paper’s sources indicated emphatically that the current hajj board is chronically cash-strapped.
How to clear the outstanding 452 pilgrims, who paid but could not embark on the 2016 hajj has become a major challenge for the current board.
BY Melvin Tarlue