Lai Mohammed Hasn’t Denied His Statements On Killing Of #EndSARS Protesters – Information Ministry
Lai Mohammed
The Federal Ministry of Information and Culture has described as “fake news” reports claiming the Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, recanted his statement that people did not die at the Lekki tollgate in Lagos State.
The minister had always insisted that no one died after soldiers invaded the Lekki tollgate in Lagos on October 20, 2020, during the #EndSARS protests and shot at protesters.
Lai Mohammed
Mohammed described incident as a “massacre without bodies”, insisting that not a single body has been produced or a single family has come out to claim their family member was killed at the tollgate.
He has also been attacking international organisations that reported the killings by the Nigerian Army.
On Monday a report of the Lagos State Judicial Panel on Police Brutality including investigation on the Lekki massacre said protesters were killed at the tollgate in what the panel described as a “massacre”.
After the report went viral on Monday, a story claimed Mohammed had recanted his comment on the Lekki tollgate.
However, the Information ministry via its Facebook page denied the report and tagged it as “fake news”.
SaharaReporters had on Tuesday reported that the minister at least five times publicly denied any death in the Lekki tollgate massacre.
On November 19 2020, the Minister had said Obianuju Catherine Udeh, popularly known as DJ Switch, who did a live stream, on Instagram, the Lekki shootings of October 20 would soon be exposed for spreading falsehood.
He had also suggested that she might be acting out a script written by other people and vowed that she would be exposed in due course.
Secondly, in November 2020, a report by the Cable News Network (CNN) showed that the Nigerian Army truly fired live and blank bullets at protesters at the Lekki toll gate but Lai Mohammed, in a press conference in Abuja described the report as “irresponsible journalism”.
Mohammed had claimed not a single body had been produced or a single family come out to claim their loved ones were killed at the Lekki Toll Gate.
He called for a sanction for the foreign media organisation but did not disclose where the sanction should come from.
Also in January 2021, human rights’ body, Amnesty International, took a swipe at the Nigerian government that 100 days after the Lekki tollgate shooting in Lagos State, the government had yet to secure justice for the victims of the incident but had been engaging in denials and cover-up.
AI had expressed worry that the EndSARS movement’s supporters continued to face intimidation from the state actors such as the Central Bank of Nigeria which since December 2020 froze the accounts of about 20 identified supporters.
Reacting, Lai Mohammed demanded that AI show proof of the 12 people reportedly killed during the shooting at the Lekki toll gate or “shut up”.
Also, on February 5, 2021 while speaking on TVC ‘This Morning’ show, Lai Mohammed said, “As we speak today, nobody has come forward to produce evidence of those that were killed at Lekki Toll Gate,” he said.
“If anybody has information, such a person should come forward. We were transparent enough to allow the enquiries to be televised live. There is no cover-up.”
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saharareporters, new york
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