Former Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has once again dismissed claims that protesters were killed at the Lekki toll gate during the October 2020 EndSARS protest.
Mohammed made the declaration during an appearance on Prime Time, a programme on Arise Television, on Wednesday.
Reiterating his long-held position, the former minister described the narrative of a massacre at the Lekki toll gate as “fake news.”
He said, “You mentioned the issue of CNN. And honestly, that pushback, I still stand by it. 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.
“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. EndSARS was unfortunate, it was tragic, but that there was a massacre at the tollgate is fake news.”
The former minister revealed that the EndSARS period was so turbulent that his family held a meeting and urged him to resign.
He added, “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. 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.”
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