Former Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has once again dismissed claims of a massacre at the Lekki Tollgate during the October 2020 #EndSARS protests, calling the narrative “fake news.”
Speaking on ARISE TV on Wednesday, December 10, Mohammed questioned the credibility of international media reports, singling out CNN for relying on “secondhand and third-hand information” without firsthand verification.
“Nobody ever said nobody died during #EndSARS. People died in Abuja, Lagos, Kano. But CNN was not at the toll gate. If a man has a goat and it does not come home one night, he will go out to look for it. Five years on, nobody has come forward to say, ‘My son went to the toll gate and didn’t return,’” he said.
Mohammed acknowledged the protests were “unfortunate and tragic” but insisted calling 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 added.
The former minister also revisited the 2021 Twitter suspension in Nigeria, defending the controversial move.
He denied it was prompted by the deletion of President Buhari’s tweet, insisting the decision was driven by broader security concerns.
“Honestly, that was not the reason. I told President Buhari, ‘Sir, we need to suspend the services of Twitter.’ He asked why and if it was about his deleted tweet. I said no, and I gave examples. Twitter had become the platform for those destabilising the country,” Mohammed said.
