By Emman Ovuakporie
ABUJA— EXECUTIVE Secretaries of both the Christian and Hajj commissions, yesterday, asked the Federal Government to give a time-frame for disengagement from funding their affairs, saying they were capable of funding pilgrimages and other religious matters.

The board secretaries spoke at a meeting with members of the House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs in Abuja.

Chairman of the Committee, Nnenna Elendu-Ukeje, had asked members of the commission what would be the fate of their commissions if the Stephen Oronsaye recommendation that the boards be scrapped was eventually approved by the Federal Government.

Mr. Kennedy Opara, Executive Secretary of the Christian Pilgrims welfare Commission, said Christians in Nigeria could conveniently fund their pilgrimages as long as the Federal Government provided a workable time-frame of total disengagement from “funding us to enable the commissions work out how to fund our activities.”

He explained that the commission generated a million dollar in Internally Generated Revenue, IGR, for the Federal Government last year.

Opara said: “What we want is a situation where the Federal Government can give us between five to 10 years period to get our bearings right. Then we will fund ourselves after the period of grace.

”Pilgrimages entail massive movement of people and these people are Nigerians so there is no way government will not be involved.”

Executive Secretary of Muslim Pilgrims Commission, Bello Mohammed, said Muslims, like their Christian brothers, could fund their pilgrimages, provided there was a disengagement time table of total withdrawal by the Federal Government.

He said the Oronsaye Commission perpetually harped on cost of funding as though Nigeria would remain in its present financial crisis without end.

He said: “We already pay almost 85 per cent of the cost. It is only 15 per cent of the cost that the government pays. If not the fact that both Israel and Saudi Arabia are outside the country, who would be talking of pilgrimages?

“If the activities of the commissions are eventually given to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it may lead to institutional failure because we have been doing these things for long.”