By James Orji
For peddling falsehood over what transpired during the EndSARS protest at Lekki Tollgate, Lagos on October 20, 2020, the Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA has called for the sack of Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed.
The Lagos state Judicial Panel on EndSARS submitted its report to Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, on Monday, in which the Justice Doris Okuwobi-led panel detailed how security agencies, including soldiers and police killed unarmed protesters.
Mohammed had repeatedly denied that protesters were killed when soldiers invaded the venue where hundreds of protesters, mostly youths gathered to protest police brutality. On one occasion, the minister described as ‘phantom’ claim that protesters were shot at and killed by the soldiers.
In November 2020, Mohammed attacked Catherine Udeh, popular as DJ Switch, a disc jockey, after she filmed soldiers shooting protesters live on Instagram, describing her as “purveyor of fake news”. Switch had since fled the country claiming she received threats to her life.
Also, the information minister later in the month described the American based Cable Net News, CNN report on the shooting as a lie.
In January, 2021 Mohammed asked Amnesty International, AI to ‘shut up’ if the global rights group failed to show proof that protesters were killed.
During the one-year memorial of the Lekki Tool gate shooting on October 20, the minister addressed a press conference in Abuja, the nation’s capital where he described the claim that protesters were killed as a ‘phantom’.
Mohammed said “one year later, and despite ample opportunities for the families of those allegedly killed and those alleging a massacre to present evidence, there has been none: No bodies, no families, no convincing evidence, nothing”.
But in the 309-page report submitted to Governor Sanwo-Olu, the panel described what happened at the Lekki Tool gate as ‘atrocious, maiming and massacre’ of peaceful protesters by security forces.
“The panel in its report found that on October 20, 2020, at the Lekki Toll Gate, 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 said.
Reacting to the report HURIWA, in a statement said the Minister must be dismissed, arrested and prosecuted for deceiving Nigerians on what actually took place at the Lekki Toll gate on the night of October 20, 2020.
HURIWA said in the statement that despite ‘undisputed evidence that indeed there was systematic annihilation of many civilian protesters in Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos State last October,” Mohammed chose to deceive Nigerians, the group, therefore urged “President Muhammadu Buhari as a father of all to order the arrest and prosecution of his minister of information, Lai Mohammed for committing a grave and heartless offence that is equivalent to the denial of the Holocaust of the 6 million Jews by Adolf Hitler which is punishable by nearly half a century of incarceration”.
“HURIWA is also commending the brave members and Chairperson of the Lagos State Judicial Panel of Inquiry on the #ENDSARS PROTESTS especially the circumstances surrounding the massive cases of extrajudicial killings by the Army and armed police when these armed forces opened fire with lethal weapons targeted at the unarmed protesters.
The human rights body further urged the federal government to ensure that the panel’s recommendations were fully implemented, asking “President not to sweep the lawlessness of the security agencies under the carpets just as the Rights group said if the President allows his information minister to get away with the impunity of denying the massacre that happened before the eyes of the world captured live on video cameras, then he will be remembered long after he has retired from public office as a dictator who oversaw the genocide of young protesters and the generations unborn will never forgive him for this.”
