{"id":65470,"date":"2025-05-08T09:42:02","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T09:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=65470"},"modified":"2025-05-08T09:42:02","modified_gmt":"2025-05-08T09:42:02","slug":"hajj-2025-takes-off-as-nahcon-flags-off-inaugural-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/05\/08\/hajj-2025-takes-off-as-nahcon-flags-off-inaugural-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Hajj 2025 Takes Off as NAHCON Flags Off Inaugural Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Adenike Lawal<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>With registration for the 2025 Hajj now officially closed, the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria has shifted its full attention to the commencement of pilgrim airlifts, beginning with a historic inaugural flight from Owerri, Imo State.<\/p>\n<p>Hajia Fatima Usara, Assistant Director of Information at the Commission, confirmed in a statement that all payments made after the May 2 deadline will be refunded, marking the end of a registration window that had earlier been extended by NAHCON Chairman, Professor Abdullahi Saleh.<\/p>\n<p>The Commission is now fully focused on the safe and efficient transportation of the 40,671 Nigerian pilgrims registered for the spiritual journey to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n<p>The first flight, scheduled for May 9, will see 315 pilgrims from Imo, Abia, and Bayelsa States take off aboard an Air Peace aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>The Owerri send-off ceremony will be hosted by Governor Hope Uzodinma and will have Vice President Kashim Shettima in attendance as Special Guest of Honour.<\/p>\n<p>NAHCON\u2019s advance team arrived in the Imo capital on May 7 to fine-tune preparations, while three additional flights are also slated for the same day: Max Air from Bauchi and two Flynas flights\u2014one from Kebbi and another from Osun via Lagos.<\/p>\n<p>A fourth flight from Niger State will complete the day\u2019s movement, bringing the total number of pilgrims arriving in Madina on the opening day to 2,528.<\/p>\n<p>The Commission promises to provide timely updates as the Hajj operations unfold, ensuring transparency, safety, and comfort for all participants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adenike Lawal With registration for the 2025 Hajj now officially closed, the National Hajj Commission of Nigeria has shifted its full attention to the commencement of pilgrim airlifts, beginning with a historic inaugural flight from Owerri, Imo State. Hajia Fatima Usara, Assistant Director of Information at the Commission, confirmed in a statement that all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":65471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[59],"class_list":["post-65470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65472,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65470\/revisions\/65472"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}