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A former Assistant Director of the Department of State Services, Dennis Amachree, has claimed that ex-military Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, died of a cardiac arrest during sexual activity, not from poisoned food as widely speculated.
Amachree made the claim in his newly released memoir, _DSS @40: My Journey Behind the Shield_. Excerpts were published by _The Nation_ on Tuesday.
The retired DSS officer, who was Assistant Director of Operations and Intelligence at the Lagos Command when Abacha died in June 1998, dismissed long-held conspiracy theories around the late dictator’s death.
According to him, Abacha suffered the fatal incident at about 4:05 a.m. at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
Amachree alleged that a woman who was with Abacha at the time panicked after realizing he was unresponsive and left the villa before security officials were alerted.
He said the woman was a pharmacist who had come to Abuja for a conference. She had accompanied her elder sister, described as Abacha’s girlfriend, to Aso Rock that night.
“At approximately 2.40 am, shortly after Gen. Useni left, Abacha’s girlfriend, an Igbo lady (name withheld), arrived at the Aso Rock Guest House from the Nicon Noga Hilton Hotel.
“With her was her younger sister, a pharmacist who was in Abuja for a conference. The Head of State had just bought his girlfriend a new SUV, and they decided to stop by to say hello to ‘Oga’.
“Abacha was taken with the younger sister, and after a short while, the girlfriend returned to the hotel, leaving the pharmacist alone with the Head of State,” he wrote.
Amachree claimed that during the encounter, the pharmacist discovered Abacha had stopped responding.
“At about 4.05 am, as they were getting intimate, the pharmacist realised Abacha had stopped moving. She called out to him, but he was unresponsive and stiff. She checked his pulse; there was none.”
He further alleged that the woman quickly dressed and left, telling a guard that “Oga” had sent her back to her hotel. She later boarded an early morning flight to Lagos before security agencies could question her.
Amachree said when Abacha’s Chief Security Officer, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, was informed around 5 a.m., efforts were made to trace the woman, but she had already left Abuja.
He said he was later ordered by DSS headquarters to track and interrogate her in Lagos.
“My team located and brought her to my office. I interrogated her myself. The first thing she said to me was: ‘I did not kill him, he died on top of me.’ After her detailed account, I called the Director in Abuja, and she was immediately flown back,” he recalled.
Amachree insisted that her account debunks the various theories that have surrounded Abacha’s death for nearly 30 years.
“The lady pharmacist’s account, on whom Abacha apparently had a coitus-induced cardiac arrest, remains the true position, and puts an end to the conspiracy theories and half-truths that have gone viral,” he said.
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