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| Minister of information and culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed |
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has described the leaked report of the Lagos State panel as fake news, insisting that no one was killed at the Lekki tollgate when the military men invaded the venue of the protest to disperse the protesters.
Mohammed said this at a press conference in Abuja on Tuesday.
The nine-member panel had in its leaked report alleged that at least nine persons were killed at the Lekki toll plaza when soldiers and policemen stormed the scene to disperse protesters on October 20, 2020.
However, Mohammed described the allegations as “tales by moonlight”.
Meanwhile, Nigerian counsel to the Cable News Network (CNN), Olumide Babalola, had called on the Minister to tender an apology to the medium for tagging it a fake news outfit after an investigative report carried out by the American media house on the killing of protesters at the Lekki tollgate on October 20, 2020.
In a statement on Tuesday, the CNN counsel said the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on Restitution for Victims of SARS Related Abuses and other matters report had vindicated the organization’s investigative report, titled, ‘How a bloody night of bullets and brutality quashed a young protest movement’.
“Alhaji Lai Mohammed should eschew his pride and apologize to the CNN if he has any integrity left,” Babalola said.
He added, “He has consistently claimed that the CNN’s report of the massacre was false, but the panel has vindicated the CNN’s position on the gruesome and wanton killings at the Lekki Tollgate.
“Without necessarily saying more on this, since the same minister had earlier called on the CNN to apologize for fake news, which has now been quasi-judicially proved to be true, one would think the honorable thing for Alhaji Mohammed to do, as an elder statesman and learned gentleman, is to apologize to the CNN especially.
“However, as we continue to wait on the minister and the Federal Government’s next move, I sympathize with families of all the victims of the Lekki massacre, while we pray for the souls of the departed and hope the government implements the report in full.”
“In the light of the report by the judicial panel, Mohammed ought to eat the humble pie and apologize to the CNN."