#EndSARS: There was no Lekki massacre – Lai Mohammed

Former Information Minister Lai Mohammed has reiterated that no massacre occurred at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos during the #EndSARS protests

Mohammed was responding to CNN’s report on the October 20, 2020 incident, which alleged that soldiers opened fire with live bullets on protesters. The Nigerian Army has consistently denied using live ammunition, saying it only fired blanks to disperse crowds after a government-imposed curfew.

At the time, Mohammed, then minister of information, wrote to Jonathan Hawkins, CNN’s VP of communications, criticizing the report for relying heavily on “manipulated social media videos” and claiming it fell short of journalistic standards while spreading disinformation.

In an interview on Arise Television’s ‘Prime Time’ on Wednesday, Mohammed acknowledged that fatalities occurred during the #EndSARS protests in Lagos, Abuja, and Kano, but disputed CNN’s coverage of the Lekki tollgate, noting the network was not present 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 #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.”

Mohammed also questioned the “massacre” narrative, noting that five years after the incident, no families have come forward claiming loved ones went missing from the tollgate. “#EndSARS was unfortunate, it was tragic, but that there was a massacre at the tollgate is fake news,” he said, using an analogy about a missing goat to illustrate his point.

He further revealed that during the protests, his family held a meeting urging him to resign, citing online and offline harassment and threats to their businesses. Mohammed explained that he had to persuade them that resignation was not a simple decision, as he possessed information they were not privy to.

“During #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,” he recounted.

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