EndSARS Panel: Time to draw a line in the sand

By Ikechukwu Amaechi

“On Thursday, November 19, 2020, Minister of Information, Lai Mohammed, addressed a press conference in Abuja to debunk the damning report of the Cable News Network (CNN) on the brutal assault against #EndSARS protesters by the military at the Lekki tollgate on October 20, 2020.

“Nigerian youths who were protesting against the brutality of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a police unit established to combat armed robbery, but which went rogue and became synonymous with unlawful killings, torture and extortion of innocent citizens, were massacred by security agents.

“CNN alleged in the report titled, “They pointed their guns at us and started shooting: How a bloody night of bullets and brutality quashed a young protest movement,” that peaceful #EndSARS protesters were massacred at the tollgate plaza by Nigerian soldiers who were drafted by the government to quell the protest.   

“Lai Mohammed was in his element. It is not for nothing that he has been dubbed the “Joseph Goebbels” of the Muhammadu Buhari regime. But what people fail to realise is that if Goebbels, the minister of propaganda for the German Third Reich under Adolf Hitler, was alive today, he would have been Lai’s student in the inelegant art of disinformation.

“I dare say that even with the meticulous #EndSARS report produced by the Justice Okuwobi panel, Nigerian rulers will continue to be brutal and animalistic in their dealings with fellow citizens unless the people draw a line in the sand.”