Chapter 4 examines the pilgrimage as a political symbol of decolonisation in Nigeria through the figure of Sir Alhaji Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto and Premier of Nigeria’s Northern Region from 1954 to 1966. A large part of his political positioning centred on his role as a defender of Islam, and proponent of an agenda of ‘northernisation’ that sought to bring political and economic parity to the North. From the late 1950s, his government embarked on a series of reforms to streamline the pilgrimage and, in particular, to promote undertaking the journey by air. Bello undertook his first Hajj in 1955, and performed it every year save one for the rest of his life. Indeed, Bello’s flights to the Hijaz every year became political acts in their own right: he filled his plane each year with a wide array of allies and notables, who could forever claim to have been part of the ‘VIP airlift’. In this way, Bello and the Northern People’s Congress transformed the image of the pilgrimage from a journey conducted in penury over years to one undertaken in relative comfort as a symbol of a modernising, but still proudly Islamic, Nigerian identity.

Chapter 1 examines the development of colonial administrative ideology in Nigeria and its ultimate application to the pilgrimage by the early 1920s. Initially, British colonial officials showed little interest in controlling the movement of subjects at all, let alone for something as complex as the pilgrimage. The nascent inklings of ‘indirect rule’ under Lord Lugard in northern Nigeria suggested that the less intrusion into the ‘traditional’ practices of colonial subjects the better, and nowhere was this considered more sacrosanct than in religious matters. However, by the late 1910s, attitudes were beginning to change, as colonial officials in both Nigeria and Sudan began to view the pilgrimage as in some ways a threat to the premises of indirect rule by weakening the control that indigenous political authorities had over their subjects, injecting anti-colonial and fanatical discourses, and threatening the security of colonial subjects through deprivation, disease, and even enslavement on their long voyages. By the early 1920s, it had become clear to many colonial officials that some form of regulation of the pilgrimage would be necessary if for no other reason than to mitigate the problems that the traditional practices posed for the new colonial political order.

The introduction lays out the historical and historiographical context for the content chapters that follow. It begins with a brief history of the Hajj from West Africa generally, and the Nigeria region specifically, prior to the twentieth century. It then transitions to an examination of the existing historiography of the Hajj, which focuses heavily on developments in the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. From here, the introduction places the Nigerian pilgrimage in the historical and historiographical context of colonial Nigeria, arguing that the British colonial government took a minimalist approach to Hajj management, even as colonial efforts to direct pilgrim flows contributed to significant increases in the total pilgrim population passing through and settling in Sudan. The most significant transformations to the pilgrimage came from the exercise of nationalist priorities to establish a more interventionist, developmentalist, and social welfare-oriented state in the years before and after Nigerian independence in 1960. The introduction thus concludes by placing the Nigerian pilgrimage in the historiographical context of decolonisation studies, arguing both for the importance of decolonisation as a transformational force in the history of the Hajj and for the Hajj as a valuable case study for examining transnational implications of global decolonisation.

Chapter 2 recounts the first attempt of the colonial administration in Nigeria to organise and execute a pilgrimage to Mecca. In 1921, Muhammadu Dikko, the sitting Emir of Katsina and a stalwart British ally, undertook the pilgrimage with the blessing and cooperation of the colonial government. Arrangements for travel and accommodation for Dikko and his entourage were all undertaken by the colonial administration, which included a detour to England to meet personally with King George V, as well as a direct audience with Sharif Hussein of the Hijaz. The Emir’s personal journal, which was presented to the colonial government on his return, provides a fascinating account of his travels and, ultimately, a unique and complex perspective on the relationship between a Muslim leader and his European patron. Although Dikko’s voyage did not follow the overland route (he travelled to Lagos and then by ship to the UK and Hashemite Kingdom), it was ultimately the proximate impetus for the development of the ‘Nigerian Pilgrimage Scheme’ that the colonial regime rolled out in 1926.

Chapter 3 examines the negotiations between Nigeria, Sudan, and the recently established Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to establish control over the movement of West African pilgrims. The main goal of British colonial reforms was to streamline the movement of overland pilgrims to the agricultural sectors of Sudan, where they contributed greatly to the colonial economy, and then onward to the port of Suakin to cross the Red Sea. Pilgrims resisted and evaded the official routes in a number of ways, however, with the result that mass repatriations of destitute West Africans from Saudi Arabia back to Sudan became a regular feature of the pilgrimage season from the mid-1920s. The Nigerian Pilgrimage Scheme effectively placed a colonial imprimatur on the system that was already in place, allowing most pilgrims to do what they had already intended to do and providing contingency plans for those who evaded the minimalist regulations imposed. Such a system, however, depended on the structures of the British Empire to function. In the years after the Second World War, it became increasingly clear that the laissez-faire attitude toward pilgrimage regulation was no longer tenable in a rapidly decolonising world.

The book concludes with a brief discussion of the politics of pilgrimage in post-independence Nigeria, where it has become ever more ensconced with government bureaucracy and intersected with ongoing crises regarding the relationship of religion and the state in a secular, multi-cultural society. Though the pilgrimage has grown significantly since the colonial era, allowing more Nigerians than ever before to travel to Mecca more safely and efficiently than ever, accusations of corruption, inefficiency, and mismanagement are common, and the international politics of the pilgrimage continue to have significant resonance. While the nationalisation of the pilgrimage has become deeply embedded in contemporary Nigerian discourse, the legacies of its colonisation and decolonisation over the last century continue to shape the contours of Nigerians’ engagement with the Hajj.

Chapter 5 explores the logistical hurdles of effective Hajj management by focusing on a ubiquitous pejorative in Nigerian politics: corruption. The overland pilgrimage route had for a long time been associated with a range of dangers, but perhaps none was so widely condemned as the bilking of poor pilgrims by unscrupulous agents along the route. Referring to such extortion as ‘corruption’ is uncommon in the lexicon of the 1950s, as the term then was mostly confined to malfeasance by public officials, and the pilgrimage was not a public venture. However, it increasingly became a public endeavour, specifically because of the desire on the part of the nationalist Northern People’s Congress government in the Northern Region to regulate the business of the pilgrimage in the late 1950s. Ultimately, it became clear by the early 1960s that the most efficient way to minimise waste and corruption in pilgrimage logistics was for the government to take a central role in directing pilgrim traffic toward the airport and away from the long, crooked overland route.

External pressures related to the decolonisation of the British Empire were also forcing the Nigerian government to transform the pilgrimage process by the late 1950s. After Sudanese independence in 1954, the Nigerian Pilgrimage Scheme became increasingly untenable. At the same time, Saudi Arabia became more belligerent toward destitute West Africans residing in the Hijaz, repatriating thousands upon thousands in the years after the Suez Crisis. Historically, these repatriates would have been dropped off on the other side of the Red Sea, in Sudan. But this was no longer an acceptable option. The Nigerian government undertook a number of measures to advocate for its destitute pilgrims in Saudi Arabia in the late 1950s, including an arrangement to bring many back directly to Nigeria on return flights during the Hajj season. But ultimately, the only long-term solution was to prevent large numbers of poor Nigerians from becoming stranded in Sudan or Saudi Arabia at all. In 1962, the Nigerian government passed new pilgrimage regulations that, while they did not officially ban the overland pilgrimage, made it prohibitively expensive, roughly double the cost of travelling by air, which was clearly the preferred option by this point.