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Former Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has once again rejected claims of a massacre at the Lekki Tollgate during the October 2020 #EndSARS protests, describing such narratives as fake news.
Speaking on ARISE TV on Wednesday night, December 10, Mohammed criticized international media coverage of the incident, particularly CNN’s reporting, citing a lack of firsthand verification.
“Nobody ever said nobody died during #EndSARS. People died in Abuja, in Lagos, in Kano. But CNN was not at the toll gate; they relied on secondhand and third-hand information,” he said. “If a man has a goat and the goat does not come home one night, he will go out to look for that goat. Five years on, nobody has come forward to say, ‘My son went to the toll gate and didn’t return.’”
While describing the protests as “unfortunate and tragic,” Mohammed insisted that labeling the Lekki incident a massacre was misleading. “Massacre is fake news. Thirty-seven policemen were killed, six soldiers were killed. This is what I kept saying,” he stated.
Mohammed also revisited the controversial suspension of Twitter operations in Nigeria in 2021, asserting that the move was driven by national security concerns rather than the deletion of President Buhari’s tweet, as widely believed.
“Honestly, that was not the reason. I went to President Buhari and told him, ‘Sir, we need to suspend the services of Twitter.’ He asked why, even if it was because they deleted his tweet. I said no, and I gave him instances and examples,” he explained.
He added that Twitter had become the platform of choice for individuals seeking to destabilize the country.
