Former Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, has revealed that his wife and children mounted intense pressure on him to resign from office at the height of the #EndSARS protests, following what he described as sustained public hostility and online harassment directed at his family.
Mohammed made the disclosure on Thursday during an interactive session at the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Abeokuta (MAPOLY), Ogun State, where he donated copies of his book, Headlines & Soundbites: Media Moments that Defined an Administration, to the institution’s library under his nationwide Reading Sessions Project.
The former minister said the backlash against him during the protests spilled over to his immediate family, making life unbearable for his children, who were repeatedly targeted both online and in public spaces because of his role in government.
“My children were bullied online and offline. They held a meeting with my wife and asked me to resign because they couldn’t cope anymore. I told them I could endure it, but they said they could not,” Mohammed told students and staff at the event.
He explained that despite the pressure, he refused to step down, insisting that he had not committed any wrongdoing, particularly in the handling of the Lekki Toll Gate incident linked to the #EndSARS protests.
“If the massacre had happened, I would have resigned. But it never happened. Five years after, nobody has come out to say their child went to the toll gate and did not return,” he said, restating his long-held position that soldiers were not deployed with live ammunition and that there was no massacre at the Lekki Toll Gate.
Mohammed added that he was determined not to allow his children to be stigmatised as “children of someone who betrayed his leader,” noting that he even offered them the option of temporarily dropping his surname to shield them from further attacks.
“I told them they could stop bearing the name Lai Mohammed for the next three years. They couldn’t, and that was how we resolved the matter,” he said.
The former minister also criticised the role of international media in shaping public perception of the incident, singling out CNN, which he accused of unprofessional reporting and amplifying misinformation driven by emotions rather than verified facts.
Speaking on his newly released book, Mohammed said it was written to provide context and insider perspectives on several controversial events between 2015 and 2023, arguing that many issues attributed to government failures were misunderstood or misrepresented.
“Many things the government is blamed for are not actually the government’s fault. This book is an attempt to bring clarity and context. I wrote it from the inside, not based on rumours,” he said, urging students and researchers to critically engage with its contents.
The event was attended by members of MAPOLY’s Governing Council, management, academic staff and student leaders. In his remarks, the Rector, Arc. Dr. Adekoyejo Jolaoso, thanked Mohammed for selecting the polytechnic as one of the first 20 institutions nationwide to benefit from the book donation initiative.
Jolaoso said the donated books would serve as valuable reference materials for students of mass communication, public relations and political science, particularly in the areas of crisis communication, media ethics and government–media relations.
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