President Muhammadu Buhari has approved an exchange rate of N160 to $1, for this year’s pilgrimage operations.
The president’s approval was disclosed by John Kennedy Opara, executive secretary, Nigerian Christian Pilgrims Commission, after briefing the president on the activities of the commission.
President Buhari had last week embarked on a debriefing exercise of permanent secretaries of different ministries and heads of parastatals.
Opara, who said he had come to brief the president just like his counterpart in the Hajj Commission, said the president was pleased with how far the commission had gone in its operations, saying the president approved a peg of “$1 to N160 for the conventional exchange rate for this year’s pilgrimage operation and he also agreed that he will continue to encourage us, particularly as we drive to ensure self sustenance, to make sure that the pilgrims are able to pay for the pilgrimages removing government sponsorship.”
As of Friday last week, the official exchange rate stood at $1 to N198, while the parallel market hung at $1 to N230.
Opara, who said he briefed the president on the efforts of the commission to ensure self sustenance, said the commission had sought out other means of sponsorship for pilgrims “so that the Federal Government and states will spend the necessary resources on other things, while the pilgrimage is self funding as time goes on.”
He said the commission was already encouraging the wealthy to accommodate the less privileged in their budget and had also reduced the overhead per person. For those going to Israel for the 11 days trip, it will now cost N379,840 as against N421,619 last year, and the youth pilgrimage is going to cost N357,000.
The Commission is already running four pilgrimages in one year. The first is the Easter pilgrimage, the Youth Pilgrimage, which is termed operation catch them young, the family pilgrimage and the overall pilgrimage.
Opara further disclosed that the commission had added a new package, skill acquisition, to the yearly pilgrimage, enabling pilgrims to be trained in agriculture.
“The beauty of what we are doing is that we have added skill acquisition in order words people who go on pilgrimage can undergo the skill acquisition programme organised by the Nigerian Christian
Pilgrims Commission and ministry of agriculture Israel to train our people in the area of agriculture and also we are introducing the pilgrimage pilot lottery scheme that will enable people who are lucky
to be able to go on this trip without much dependence on the state and the Federal Government,” he said.
Elizabeth Archibong
