TECHNOCRAT MEDIA NIGERIA
Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s information minister says the report of the Lagos Judicial Panel of Inquiry that probed the aftermath of the October 2020 military shooting of protesters in Lekki should be disregarded as fake.
Mohammed stated this on Monday, insisted there was no massacre, contrary to the panel’s findings that at least 11 unarmed civilian protesters were shot dead at Lekki Toll Gate by soldiers deployed by the Nigerian Army.
According to The Gazette, he said, “There’s absolutely nothing in the report that is circulating to make us change our minds that there was a massacre in Lekki on October 20, 2020,” Mohammed said at a press briefing in Abuja on Monday.
The Lagos judicial panel on #EndSARS released its findings earlier this month, noting that the “officers of the Nigerian Army shot, injured and killed unarmed helpless and defenseless protesters, without provocation or justification, while they were waving the Nigerian flag and singing the national anthem and the manner of assault and killing could in context be described as a massacre.”
The report submitted to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu shows that protesters were massacred.
It further revealed that the Nigerian soldiers stole the corpses and wiped clean the crime scene to hinder further investigations by the panel.
The panel also demanded that the Buhari-led administration should apologise to Nigerians for the Lekki Tollgate massacre perpetrated by the Nigerian soldiers, as well as a declaration of October 20 as a national remembrance day to honour the fallen young Nigerians.
In the past year, the minister has more than five times repeatedly said that no protesters died at the tollgate despite multiple reports stating otherwise. Minister Mohammed also wrote petitions and attacked international media that reported the killings by the Nigerian Army.
In October, during the first anniversary of the Lekki tollgate shooting, the information minister, in a press briefing in Abuja, said there is no proof that any protester was killed at the Lekki tollgate, last year.
The minister described the incident at the tollgate as a “phantom massacre”, saying it is the “first massacre in the world without blood or bodies”.
He said, “Today marks the first anniversary of the phantom massacre at Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos, which was the culmination of an otherwise peaceful protest that was later hijacked by hoodlums,”
The minister’s press statement today comes a day after United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Nigerian government’s response to the recommendations of the panel report will let the Biden administration know the next line of action.
