Former Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has once again dismissed claims that a “massacre” occurred at the Lekki Toll Gate during the October 2020 EndSARS protests, describing the widespread narrative as misinformation amplified on 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 major challenges of his tenure was countering 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 asserted.
Mohammed emphasized that, in the five years since the protests, no family has reported a missing relative linked to the toll gate incident. Using an analogy, he said: “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.”
The former minister also criticized 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 further defended the Buhari administration’s stance on social media, labeling unregulated platforms as a serious national concern that often fueled misinformation. He also reiterated that the 2021 Twitter suspension was a necessary measure 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, with conflicting reports fueling local and global debate over security forces’ actions and government accountability.
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