Lai Mohammed, former minister of information and culture under the late President Muhammadu Buhari, has said the October 2020 #EndSARS protests were fuelled more by fake news and disinformation than by any failure of government communication. 

In a statement sent to Peoples Gazette on Sunday, Mr Mohammed’s media aide, Nnamdi Atupulazi, said the former minister made the remarks during a high-level forum at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) on Friday. 

Mr Mohammed alleged that while the protests began as a genuine expression of public grievances against police brutality, they were quickly hijacked by those with ulterior motives and then escalated significantly by the deliberate spread of misinformation and unverified reports across traditional and digital media.

”The problem we had was not the usual communication gap between the government and the citizens. It was fake news and disinformation, coupled with unbridled violence,” he said.

He also accused foreign media of relying heavily on unverified and, in some cases, doctored content, thereby amplifying tensions and shaping a global narrative that did not fully reflect the realities on the ground.

“What we saw during EndSARS was the dangerous power of disinformation in real time,” he said, noting that it “reinforces the urgent need to strengthen mechanisms for fact-checking, promote media responsibility and build resilience against the growing threat of information disorder.”

Concerning the COVID-19 pandemic, the former minister highlighted how Nigeria successfully leveraged communication despite the absence of any existing global template at the onset of the crisis.

”When COVID-19 broke out, there was no template to fall back on. The last major pandemic, the Spanish Flu, had occurred over 100 years earlier. So we had to devise our own communication strategy on the go,” he said.

He explained that the government adopted a coordinated and adaptive communication framework, anchored on transparency, consistency and responsiveness. 

“Daily briefings, multi-platform messaging and sustained engagement with the media ensured that Nigerians received timely and accurate information,” he said.

He added that stakeholders produced a wide range of advocacy and communication materials, translated them into major indigenous languages and pidgin, and then disseminated them across traditional and digital platforms.

Mr Atupulazi noted that the LSE event formed part of Mr Mohammed’s three-day speaking tour of the UK, where he engaged audiences on leadership, governance and public communication anchored on his new book, ”Headlines & Soundbites: Media Moments That Defined an Administration,” chronicling his tenure as Nigerian government spokesman from 2015 to 2023.