Former Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has once again rejected claims that a “massacre” occurred at the Lekki Toll Gate during the October 2020 EndSARS protests, maintaining that the narrative was propelled by misinformation and unverified content circulated on social media.
Mohammed restated his position during an interview on ARISE News on Wednesday while discussing his new book, Headlines and Soundbites: Media Moments That Defined an Administration.
He described the handling of misinformation, particularly during the EndSARS demonstrations, as one of the most challenging moments of his tenure.
“EndSARS was unfortunate, it was tragic, but that there was a massacre at the tollgate is fake news,” Mohammed said.
He argued that no family has approached the government in the past five years to report a missing relative allegedly linked to the Lekki protest.
“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,” he stated.
Mohammed also criticised CNN’s coverage of the Lekki incident, saying the network relied on “second-hand information” and that he stands by the government’s response to the report.
“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,” he noted.
The former minister maintained that the Buhari administration regarded unregulated social media as a serious national concern, arguing that it frequently amplified misinformation.
He defended the federal government’s 2021 suspension of Twitter, describing the move as a difficult but necessary attempt to curb harmful online content.
The Lekki Toll Gate incident, which occurred on October 20, 2020, remains one of the most contentious episodes of the EndSARS protests against police brutality.
Protesters who had gathered peacefully at the toll gate were reportedly fired upon by security forces, triggering chaos and drawing global attention to Nigeria’s human rights record.
Although official accounts and independent investigations have differed on the exact number of casualties, the event continues to fuel debate over security operations, state accountability, and the broader implications of misinformation in national conversations.
