Former Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, has once again stated that no deaths occurred at the Lekki Toll Gate on October 20, 2020, during the #EndSARS protest.
He stated that the government never denied that deaths occurred during the protest, but argued that no deaths were recorded at the Lekki Toll Gate specifically.
Mohammed made the remarks on Tuesday while speaking as a guest on Politics Today, a current affairs programme on Channels Television.
He said, “Five years later, my position has not changed. At no point did the government ever say that lives were not lost during #EndSARS. We lost several lives, including soldiers and policemen, but nobody was killed at the toll gate.”
Mohammed explained that he was in constant communication with senior military officials as events unfolded, even before soldiers were deployed to Lagos.
He further argued that the absence of verifiable casualty claims from families supports his position.
“Even before the soldiers were drafted, I was in touch with the Chief of Defence Staff. I was in touch with the hierarchy of the military because we were monitoring these developments.
“It’s a very simple logic. Five years after, nobody has come out today to say, ‘My ward went to the toll gate, and he didn’t come back.”
Mohammed also distanced himself from the conclusions reached by the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry, which investigated the Lekki Toll Gate incident and described it as a “massacre.”
“I am not part of the Lagos State Government. I did not know how the panel arrived at their conclusion. I was in the room when decisions were taken, and I knew that the soldiers went to the toll gates with blank bullets,” he said.
He maintained that the panel’s report contained “a lot of inconsistencies,” though he did not elaborate on specific aspects he disputed.
Asked whether the Federal Government regretted deploying troops to Lekki, an episode widely seen as a dark moment in the administration of former President Muhammadu Buhari, Mohammed defended the decision.
According to him, the decision to involve the military was justified under the circumstances.
“The #EndSARS started peacefully. At a point in time, it was hijacked by hoodlums. That was when the government said no, we have to send soldiers to stop this from getting out of hand.
“So the government took the right decision, because hoodlums had hijacked it at that time,” he said.