The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed has been asked to apologise to the American media house, Cable News Network.
Nigerian counsel for the Cable News Network, Olumide Babalola asked Mohammed to tender an apology to the medium for tagging as fake an investigative report by CNN.
The lawyer, in a statement on Tuesday, said the panel’s report had vindicated the CNN’s investigative report, titled, ‘How a bloody night of bullets and brutality quashed a young protest movement’.
Babalola recalled that the minister had railed at the CNN over the report, which he tagged ‘fake news’ and threatened sanction against the media house.
The lawyer, however, said in the light of the report by the judicial panel, Mohammed ought to eat the humble pie and apologise to the CNN.
The lawyer said, “Alhaji Mohammed had consistently claimed that the CNN’s report of massacre was false, but the panel has vindicated the CNN’s position on the gruesome and wanton killings at the Lekki tollgate.
“Without necessarily saying more on this, since the same minister had earlier called on the CNN to apologise for fake news, which has now been quasi-judicially proved to be true, one would think the honourable thing for Alhaji Mohammed to do, as an elder statesman and learned gentleman, is to apologise to the CNN especially.
“However, as we continue to wait on the minister and the Federal Government’s next move, I sympathise with families of all the victims of Lekki massacre, while we pray for the souls of the departed and hope the government implements the report in full.”