‘No Massacre, No Family Reported Missing Child in 5 Years’: Lai Mohammed Reignites #EndSARS Protests at Lekki Tollgate

• Former Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, has reiterated his long-held position that no massacre occurred at the Lekki tollgate during the October 2020 #EndSARS protests.

Former Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, has once again maintained that there was no massacre at the Lekki tollgate during the October 20, 2020 #EndSARS protests in Lagos.

The Nigerian Army had dispersed protesters that night after a government-imposed curfew. In its investigative report, CNN alleged that soldiers fired live rounds at demonstrators. The military denied the allegation, insisting it fired only blank bullets into the air to disperse the crowd.

At the time, Mohammed wrote to Jonathan Hawkins, CNN’s Vice President of Communications, accusing the network of relying on “manipulated social media videos” and publishing a report that “fell short of journalistic standards” and could inflame national tensions.

Speaking on Arise Television’s Prime Time on Wednesday, Mohammed said he still stands firmly by his pushback against CNN.

“Nobody ever said nobody died during #EndSARS,” he clarified. “People died in Abuja, Lagos, and Kano. But CNN was not at the tollgate. They relied on second-hand information.”

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The former minister argued that despite widespread claims of a massacre, no family has publicly declared a loved one missing from the tollgate since the incident.

“If a man has a goat and it doesn’t come home one night, he will go out and look for it,” he said. “Five years on, nobody has come forward to say their son or ward went to the tollgate and didn’t return.”

Mohammed described the #EndSARS protests as tragic but insisted that the narrative of a Lekki tollgate “massacre” remains “fake news.”