A former senior officer of the Department of State Services has given a first-hand account of the last hours of ex-military ruler Sani Abacha, saying the former head of state died of cardiac arrest during sex in 1998.
Dennis Amachree, who was then assistant director of operations and intelligence at the DSS Lagos command, detailed the events in his new book, DSS @40: My Journey Behind the Shield. Excerpts were reported by The Nation.
According to Amachree, Abacha died around 4:05 a.m. on June 8, 1998, at the presidential villa in Abuja while with a woman described as a pharmacist and the younger sister of Abacha’s girlfriend.
He said the woman and her older sister, an Igbo lady identified only as Abacha’s girlfriend, had come to the Aso Rock Guest House at about 2:40 a.m. after visiting from the Nicon Noga Hilton Hotel. The girlfriend later left, leaving her sister with the general.
Amachree wrote that the woman noticed Abacha had become unresponsive during intimacy, checked for a pulse and found none. In a panic, she dressed and told a guard that “Oga” had asked for a car to take her back to her hotel. She was driven back to the Hilton, told her sister what happened, and caught a 7 a.m. flight to Lagos.
The account says Major Al-Mustapha was not informed until about 5 a.m. By the time SSS operatives went to the Hilton to locate the woman, she was already en route to Lagos.
Following instructions from DSS headquarters, Amachree said he tracked and interrogated her in Ogudu, Lagos. Her first words to him, he recalled, were: “I did not kill him, he died on top of me.”
Amachree said the woman’s statement, which described a coitus-induced cardiac arrest, should put an end to long-standing speculation about the death, including claims about poisoned apples and foreign women.
Abacha ruled Nigeria from November 1993 until his death in June 1998. His time in office remains associated with allegations of human rights abuses and authoritarian rule. He died just weeks before MKO Abiola, the presumed winner of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election, also died in custody.
