The Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed has again attacked CNN over its coverage on the Lekki tollgate shootings during the EndSars protest in October 2020.
Mohammed told THISDAY in an interview that CNN created division and concocted lies against Nigeria when the federal government insisted on regulating social media.
He Said:
“But when we said we must regulate the social media, the world took up arms against us. How come that the same CNN that invented lies against us is suddenly championing the crusade in America that social media must not be used for fake news and disinformation?”
“Give the names and addresses. Three months or 100 days after the Lekki shooting, if anybody has lost a relation, a son, a daughter or a ward, won’t she or he have come forward? Amnesty International is not a respecter of our judicial system. What it ought to do, if there is any judicial evidence, is to go before the judicial panel of enquiry or at least wait for the outcome of the judicial enquiry.
“Amnesty International is reproving the federal government, but as we speak, the American government is arresting and prosecuting every person that took part in the invasion of the Capitol Hill. They are also investigating the source of funding of those people. When Nigeria started it they went to court, forgetting that it is because Nigeria exists as a country that we are here. When one policeman was killed at the Capitol, it was an insurrection.
If not because we were proactive, they were coming to the National Assembly and CNN did not see anything wrong in that. Amnesty is guilty of double standards. When the US refused a visa to ICC investigators, Amnesty did not find its voice. It should respect us as a sovereign nation and should stop vending lies, disinformation.
Their purpose we don’t know, but this is very clear when it is Nigeria they find their voices when it is America, they keep mute,” the minister added.