Ex-DSS Director Dennis Amachree has claimed that Abacha died during intimate sexual encounter and not poisoning.
NewsOnline Nigeria reports that a former Assistant Director of the Department of State Services (DSS), Dennis Amachree, has claimed that Nigeria’s former military Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, died from a cardiac arrest during an intimate encounter, dismissing long-standing conspiracy theories surrounding the late leader’s death.
Amachree made the disclosure in his newly released memoir, DSS @40: My Journey Behind the Shield, excerpts of which were published by The Nation on Tuesday.
ALSO: PFIPC Probe: CBN Confirms Opening Foreign Currency Accounts for Fake Agency
The retired intelligence officer, who served as Assistant Director of Operations and Intelligence at the Lagos DSS Command when Abacha died in June 1998, said the former military ruler suffered a fatal cardiac arrest at about 4:05 a.m. inside the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
According to Amachree, the woman who was with Abacha at the time panicked after discovering he had become unresponsive and quietly left the Presidential Villa before security personnel became aware of the incident.
He alleged that the woman, a pharmacist who was in Abuja for a conference, had accompanied her elder sister, whom he described as Abacha’s girlfriend, to the Presidential Villa earlier that night.
Amachree wrote that after the elder sister returned to her hotel, the younger woman remained behind with the Head of State.
He claimed that during their intimate encounter, the woman noticed that Abacha had stopped responding.
“At about 4.05 a.m., 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 wrote.
According to the former DSS officer, the woman hastily left the guest house after requesting transportation back to her hotel and later boarded an early morning flight to Lagos before security agencies could question her.
Amachree further stated that when Abacha’s Chief Security Officer, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, was informed of the situation around 5:00 a.m., efforts were immediately made to trace the woman.
He said he was subsequently directed by the DSS headquarters to locate and interrogate her in Lagos.
Recalling the interrogation, Amachree quoted the woman as saying:
“I did not kill him, he died on top of me.”
He added that after taking her detailed statement, she was flown back to Abuja.
Amachree maintained that the woman’s account supports his conclusion that Abacha died from a coitus-induced cardiac arrest, insisting that it contradicts decades of speculation and conspiracy theories surrounding the former military ruler’s death.
“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 wrote.
Gen. Sani Abacha, who ruled Nigeria from November 1993 until his death on June 8, 1998, died while in office. The circumstances surrounding his sudden death have remained a subject of public debate for nearly three decades, with various conflicting accounts emerging over the years.
