Former Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, has maintained that there was no massacre at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos during the 2020 #EndSARS protests.
Major international news channels, including CNN, detained in a report on October 20, 2020, that soldiers used live bullets on the protesters.
However, the army had repeatedly denied deploying live ammunition, saying it fired blank bullets in a bid to disperse the protesters after the government had announced a curfew.
At the time, Mohammed, who was the information minister, wrote to Jonathan Hawkins, VP communications at CNN, to say the report “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 on Arise Television’s ‘Prime Time’ on Wednesday, Mohammed said no one denied that fatalities occurred during the unrest, noting deaths in Abuja, Lagos, and Kano.
However, the former information minister specifically challenged CNN’s reporting on the tollgate incident, adding that the network was not at the scene and relied on second-hand 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 shared that during the protest, his family convened a meeting urging him to resign.
He said his family faced intense online and offline bullying, including threats to their businesses, and questioned the value of his involvement.
Mohammed recounted sitting them down to explain that resignation was not a straightforward decision, as he possessed knowledge and insights they did not have access to.
“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.
