Contrary to apprehension being nursed by intending Muslim pilgrims that the Saudi Arabia authorities may refuse to grant visa to the pilgrims from Nigeria, for this year's pilgrimage to Mecca, owing to the panic caused by the deadly Ebola virus disease, Saudi Embassy in the country, had since Monday, commenced the issuance of visas to intending pilgrims.

Managing Director of Med View Airlines, Alhaji Bankole Muneer, whose airline is one of the designated carriers for the 2014 Hajj exercise to Mecca, confirmed this development on Wednesday.

According to Muneer: "Ebola virus has nothing to do with visa issuance; there is no issue as far as visa is concerned. They started the issuance on Monday; I can confirm that to you, but some technical hitches, which have been resolved by the Saudi authorities. I won't be able to tell you more on that. I think the embassy would be in the best position to do that."

Speaking at the international wing of the Murtala Muhammed Airport while taking delivery of additional two new Boeing 767-300ER to join the airline's fleet for the hajj operations, Bankole declared that his airline had been given approval by the Federal Government to airlift 5,303 pilgrims to the holy land for the exercise.

The over five thousand pilgrims allocated to Med View, formed part of the over fifteen thousand that were expected to participate in this year's exercise.

Bankole said that the carrier would airlift pilgrims from South-West, South-South and South-Eastern zones of the nation.

Just as he disclosed that the exercise would commence with the airline this week Saturday from the Ilorin Airport.

He explained further that pilgrims from the South-West except Lagos; Osun, Ogun, Oyo, Edo, Ekiti and Ondo states and the Armed Forces would be airlifted from the Lagos Airport while the South-South and South-East passengers would be airlifted from Port Harcourt and Enugu Airports, respectively.

His words:"We are using at the moment, four airports and we are picking the Eastern people from Enugu, south-south from Port Harcourt and Ondo, Ekiti from Ilorin and other parts of the south-west from Lagos, bringing the business to the doors of the people from their states and exposing a new trend to their comforts. We are taking 5,303 passengers in all except other cities outside the West African countries, which we do support.

"We are going all flights direct to Medina, which is 100 per cent fulfillment of our commitment to our pilgrims. So, what this means is that we are taking away the stress where pilgrims would be dropped in Jeddah and they would be using buses to carry them to Medina, thereby exposing them to risks for about six to eight hours on the road. So, we drop them directly in Medina. We have fulfilled that now in the last two years and they are very happy about that."