Coalition Knocks CNN over Report on Lekki Shooting

By Segun James

Following its controversial report on the Lekki toll gate shooting in Lagos on October 20, Cable News Network (CNN) has been branded as the newest face of foreign destabilisation in Nigeria.

The Coalition for Nigeria Movement (CNM), in a statement said that CNN elevated divisive and destructive forces towards a conspiracy against Nigeria.

The CNM in the statement signed by Comrade Samuel Daluba said the group was not surprised as it had previously forecasted that some forces were in connivance with a few wealthy and disgruntled elements in Nigeria to destabilise the country.

Daluba noted that the disparity in the casualty figure clearly shows that CNN was a hired media mercenary doing a hatchet job.

He wondered why nothing was mentioned about the killings of security agents, civilians and the reckless destruction/looting of private and public properties of Nigerians by the #EndSARS protesters.

The coalition, however, warned CNN to steer clear of Nigeria, adding that the nation is a forbidden land to practice their trade.

“Let us admit ab initio that the mandate of building Nigeria is a divine order given to every Nigerian from birth. Therefore, we appreciate your individual and collective roles in support of this sacred obligation these years.

“We are reluctant to remind Nigerians about the gores and bloodbath, which characterized the #EndSARS protests especially, in the Southern part of the country. But it is expedient to speak out loudly, against the sponsors of this bloodbath and carnages against their own country and the foreign forces, contracted to further execute Plan “B” which have continued to promote the irrationally destructive and evil agenda of the dismemberment of Nigeria by disparate means.

“CNM is inconsolably saddened with the Cable News Network (CNN), the American-based and globally recognized cable network’s latest justification of itself as a shameful betrayal of its professionalism in the report in its edition of November 18th, 2020 on the so-called investigation of the Lekki Toll Gate shootings. The medium expanded the gamut of its influenced propaganda, inflammatory and satanic motives as always serviced by the enemies of Nigeria, hellbent on triggering massive public crises, anarchy and veiled subversion of national security to discredit President Muhammadu Buhari.

“By the biased, crooked, hateful and predetermined outcomes of the CNN’s report on Lekki Toll Gate shootings, it undermined every other patriotic interest in Nigeria, but excitedly replicated condemned old tales and elevated the agenda of the divisive and destructive forces tirelessly working in conspiracy with foreign forces against the country.

“We are dismayed and thoroughly embarrassed that CNN would condescend to stage out in such an undignified aura and unprofessional manner to run errands for disgruntled elements in the country. CNM wishes to intimate CNN that its narratives on the Lekki Toll Gate shootings in the report is misplaced, misleading and exposes the medium as contracted media mercenaries, which was doggedly determined to deliver on the assignment, but were frustrated by the paucity of facts and the desperation to twist reality has stained their image horribly.

“Many Nigerians are genuinely shocked at CNN’s senseless and absurd quest to reinvent the sacred facts concerning the Lekki Toll Gate incidence. It is targeted to freshly inflame passions of anger and violence in Nigerians, through the falsified and unconvincing claims that soldiers of the Nigerian Army fired live bullets at #EndSARS protesters and killed scores in the process. The medium also qualified the palpably violent protests as bloodless, despite the overwhelming destructions perpetrated by the protesters.

“But CNM is not surprised at CNN’s latest outing, because we have prophesized in the past that some foreign forces are in connivance with a few wealthy and disgruntled elements in Nigeria to destabilize the country. We have raised this alarm several times to the public that some foreign agents, after the disunity of Nigeria were also adroitly behind the plots.”

The group insisted that “to demonstrate that CNN has no corporate dignity and burdened by a tainted reputation, the attempts to rejig and twist the facts to give it a semblance of wrongdoing on the part of the FGN and security agencies, it was pushed to contradict its released casualty figures on a single incident now and in its earlier reports, yet irresistibly proceeded unperturbed because they were on a mission.

“Nigerians should bear us witness that the same CNN had ostensibly followed the hoax of some Nigerian social media activists on the #EndSARS protests by claiming a death toll of 38 persons killed by soldiers at Lekki in its October 23, 2020 edition, three days after the incident. In reverse mode 29 days later, precisely on November 18, 2020, the same international news medium, recanted itself, after it said, it devoted time to conduct a so-called thorough investigation of the Lekki Toll Gate shooting but released to the world a casualty figure of two persons,” it stressed.