Alhai Lai Mohamed, Minister of Information and Culture, has finally responded to the Lagos State #EndSARS Panel Report, rejecting it as a fabrication that failed to take into consideration the available evidence.
At a press conference held in Abuja on Tuesday, the minister explained the government's position
Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Minister of Information and Culture, speaks at a press conference.
Muhammad stated that it was alarming that the same complaints leveled against Nigerian police officers were simply collated and submitted as a report by the panel established to evaluate claims of police abuse.
"It is an act of intimidation against the majority by a minority," Mohammed argued in response.
Spokesman for the Lekki Panel reports that Lai Mohammed is out of Nigeria and that a response is expected soon.
"We are currently abroad of the country (Nigeria) on assignment," he had stated. "You can expect a response from us shortly. It was unclear whose country he had visited with his principal, as he did not specify.
The Minister's office had remained silent for several days following the disclosure of the panel's findings on the Lekki incident on October 20, 2020, to the public.
Nigerians had called for the Minister's response to the leaked report because of his claim that there were no deaths at the Lekki Tollgate on October 20, 2020, which had prompted the leak.
In a statement on November 19, 2020, the Minister stated that Obianuju Catherine Udeh, also known as DJ Switch, who conducted a live stream on Instagram about the Lekki shootings on October 20, will be exposed for spreading false information in the near future.
Furthermore, he had hinted that she might be acting out a screenplay that had been created by someone else, and he had promised that she would be revealed in due course.
Asserting that, contrary to DJ Switch's claims, not a single body has been produced and no family has come forward to say that a member of their family was slain at the Lekki tollgate, Mohammed described the occurrence of October 20, 2020, as a "massacre without bodies."
He stated at the time that "one of the purveyors of fake news was one DJ Switch whose real name is Obianuju Catherine Udeh, even though she claimed authentic evidence of mass killings." He went on to say that "one of the purveyors of fake news was one DJ Switch whose real name is Obianuju Catherine Udeh, even though she claimed authentic evidence of mass killings." Unexpectedly, instead of providing any proof she may have, she elected to flee the nation under the pretext that her life was in imminent danger of being killed. "For whom are you in danger?"
Another instance occurred in November 2020 when a CNN investigation revealed that the Nigerian Army had indeed fired live and blank bullets at protesters at the Lekki toll gate, but the report was dismissed by Lai Mohammed, who described the report as "irresponsible journalism" at a press conference in Abuja that day.
Mohammed said that not a single body had been found, and that not a single family had come forward to claim that their loved ones had been slaughtered at the Lekki Tollgate.
He asked for a sanction against the foreign media organization, although he did not specify from whence the sanction should come.
The second part of a CNN investigation into the incident, which further implicates the Nigerian Army in the killing of peaceful protesters, has been made public. The first part of the investigation can be found here.
The Nigerian government responded by labeling the item as "false news," but without giving any proof to support its own assertion.
Lai Mohammed had alleged that CNN was desperate and was pushing fake news to get viewers to watch.
As a result of their investigation and findings, the Lagos State Judicial Panel on #EndSARS was able to establish that there was indeed a massacre at the Lekki tollgate, which was handed to the Lagos state government on Monday.
The Nigerian Army and police fired live rounds at nonviolent protestors at the Lekki Tollgate, according to the report, which was released last year.
Furthermore, the Panel found that officials of the Nigerian Army who had been present at the Lekki Toll Gate and who had been summoned by the Panel had "deliberately avoided appearing before the Panel in an attempt to conceal crucial evidence from the Panel."
Source: Sahara reporters
