This government and it's many praise singers and apologists don't seem to get it. The ongoing outcry, which has been on for years but has become a lot more strident lately, is to the effect that our government has no business in matters of pilgrimages of any shade. The entire bureaucracy of the Christian Pilgrim Welfare Board has no place in our Civil Service. Hence the activities there, both capital and recurrent do not deserve a charge on our public revenue.
It has been the hope here that poverty, nay adversity, will make this administration take the right step of distancing itself from matters of religious pilgrimages. This is a step that CANNOT NOW be taken by the previous administration. It has long gone. The opposition by the enlightened members of the public, (not rabble rousers and religious jingoists), has never focused on the hajj. We have alway insisted that government should leave pilgrimages to the faithful to arrange as they deem fit. Apart from consular services at the other end, our busybody Federal Government has no further role. It's "mischievous" involvement and our unrelenting opposition to it clearly predates Buhari's swearing in as president. If a government sustains a silly policy (eg fuel subdidy) it behoves a new administration to throw it out, which Buhari did. Any recourse to pleading precedents indicates a sheer lack of understanding of the finer aspects of governance.
In case Buhari hasn't noticed, let me remind him that we are broke.
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