Lai Mohammed, the former minister of communication, has stated that there was no massacre at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos during the #EndSARS demonstrations.
CNN reported on the October 20, 2020 incident, alleging that military used live shots on the demonstrators.
However, the army has frequently denied using live gunfire, claiming that it shot blank bullets in an attempt to disperse demonstrators after the government declared a curfew.
Mohammed, who was minister of information at the time, wrote to Jonathan Hawkins, VP communications at CNN, saying the piece “did not just fall short of journalistic standards but reinforces the disinformation that is going around on the issue”.
He said CNN relied “heavily on manipulated social media videos”, adding that the “inciting report” was capable of setting the country on fire.
In an interview with Arise Television’s ‘Prime Time’ on Wednesday, Mohammed stated that no one refuted that fatalities happened during the turmoil, citing deaths in Abuja, Lagos, and Kano.
However, the former information minister explicitly criticised CNN’s coverage of the tollgate event, claiming that the network was not on the site and depended on secondhand information.
“You mentioned the issue of CNN. And honestly, that pushback, I still stand by it,” he said.
“Nobody ever said nobody died during the #EndSARS. People died even in Abuja. They died in Lagos. They died in Kano. But what we were saying is that CNN was not at the tollgate. CNN relied on second-hand thought and information.”
The former minister said five years after the incident, no families have come forward to say loved ones went missing from the tollgate, labelling the “massacre” narrative as “fake news”.
“If a man has a goat and the goat does not come home one night, he will go out and look for that goat. Now, five years on today, nobody has come to tell us that my son or my ward went to the tollgate and didn’t come back,” Mohammed added.
“#EndSARS was unfortunate, it was tragic, but that there was a massacre at the tollgate is fake news.”
Mohammed revealed that during the demonstration, his family had a meeting to urge him to quit.
He said that his family had been subjected to extreme online and offline intimidation, including threats to their companies, and questioned the usefulness of his engagement.
Mohammed described sitting them down and explaining that resigning was not an easy option because he possessed information and insights that they lacked.
“During the #EndSARS, one of the toughest moments in my life was when my family met. They had a meeting and they asked me to resign. They were bullied online,” he said.
“They were bullied offline. Their businesses… they’d had enough. They said, look, wait a minute. We are not benefiting from this thing.
“So why are you exposing us? And I had to sit them down and tell them it’s not as easy as that. There are things I know. There are things that I see that you cannot see.”
Mohammed, who spoke about his new book: ‘Headlines and Soundbites — Media Moments That Defined an Administration’, described the suspension of Twitter (now X) in Nigeria as one of the most difficult decisions he was part of.
Then President Muhammadu Buhari suspended Twitter operations in Nigeria indefinitely in 2021 after one of his posts was taken down.
“One of the most difficult decisions I took was suspending Twitter’s operation in Nigeria. I had to take that decision in the national interest because a time came when Twitter became the platform of choice for all those who wanted to destabilise the country,” he said.
“There are some decisions that you have to take, not because you like them.”
He dismissed the narrative that the suspension was retaliation for Twitter’s removal of Buhari’s tweet, which had threatened to deal with pro-Biafra separatists.
“I went to President Buhari and told him we needed to suspend Twitter’s operations. He asked me why and specifically said, ‘Is it because they deleted my tweet?’ I said no, sir, and I gave him instances and examples,” Mohammed added.
