Former Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has reiterated his dismissal of claims that a “massacre” occurred at the Lekki Toll Gate during the October 2020 EndSARS protests, insisting the widespread account was built on misinformation amplified by social media.
Speaking on ARISE News on Wednesday while discussing his new book, Headlines and Soundbites: Media Moments That Defined an Administration, Mohammed said one of the biggest challenges of his time in office was pushing back against false narratives, particularly during the EndSARS unrest.
“EndSARS was unfortunate, it was tragic, but that there was a massacre at the tollgate is fake news,” he said.
The former minister argued that no family has, in the last five years, reported a missing relative linked to the protest at the toll gate.
Using an analogy, he added: “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, nobody has come to tell us that my son or my ward went to the tollgate and didn’t come back.”
Mohammed also defended his criticism of CNN’s coverage of the incident, claiming the network relied on “second-hand information” rather than firsthand reporting.
“Nobody ever said nobody died during EndSARS. People died even in Abuja, Lagos, Kano. But CNN was not at the tollgate. CNN relied on second-hand thought and information,” he said.
He maintained that the Buhari administration viewed unregulated social media as a serious national concern, arguing that it often fueled misinformation.
The ex-minister further defended the 2021 suspension of Twitter, describing it as a tough but necessary step to curb harmful content.
The Lekki Toll Gate incident on October 20, 2020, remains one of the most contentious episodes of the nationwide protests against police brutality.
While different investigations have produced conflicting accounts of what transpired, the event triggered widespread local and global scrutiny of security forces’ actions and government accountability.
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