United States-based Cable News Network (CNN) has finally admitted it lied and misinformed its viewers about the events at the Lekki Tollgate on October 20, 2020. CNN now also claims it did not get the fake news from Amnesty International.
On Oct 23rd, three days after the incident, CNN falsely tweeted: “At least 38 people were killed in Nigeria on Tuesday when the military opened fire on peaceful protesters”.
But on November 27th, CNN tweeted a volta face “Clarification”: “The tweet from October 23 did not attribute the death toll from protests in Nigeria to Amnesty International. The tweet also did not make it clear that the death toll was for protests across the country”.
The initial report by CNN was a classic falsehood; it never happened, and not a single dead body was found at the scene. The Army was only at the Lekki Tollgate and nowhere else, as confirmed by CNN’s own satellite image. The question begging for an answer now is: If the Army was only at Lekki Tollgate and there was no evidence of killing, where then did the “Massacre” take place?
The CNN fabricated “Lekki Massacre” story would, unfortunately, find echo chambers through news outlets and Twitter handles across the globe and even formed the basis for a hysterical, fact-mangled United Kingdom Parliamentary inquest focusing on Nigeria.
The Nigerian Army strongly denied this fake story. The Government of Nigerian demanded a retraction from CNN. The Nigerian Minister of Information Lai Mohammed called out CNN for misleading its viewers by inventing a “Massacre without Dead Bodies”. CNN’s satellite imaging which revealed the alleged movement of troops from the Barracks to the scene of the incident could not identify a single dead body at the scene.
CNN admitting it lied was inevitable and came as no surprise to anyone conversant with the true account of events at the Lekki Tollgate on October 20th.
From the initial self-denial defiance of ‘We Stand by Our Story’, CNN has eased into a phase of bluster highlighted by the “Clarification”, which is the last phase before total refutation. It is a matter of time before CNN turns the round and apologises to the Nigerian Government for fabricating the legend of the “Lekki Massacre” which never happened. As we patiently await CNN’s profuse apologies, Edgar J. Mohn’s words come to mind: A lie has speed, but the truth has endurance.
