A retired Department of State Services (DSS) operative, Dennis Amachree, has revealed fresh details about the death of former military Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, claiming the woman who was with him during his final moments insisted she did not kill him.
According to Amachree, the woman, an Igbo pharmacist, told investigators that Abacha died during an intimate encounter at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, in the early hours of June 8, 1998.
Speaking in his newly released 348-page memoir, DSS @40: My Journey Behind the Shield, the former Assistant Director of Operations and Intelligence at the Lagos State SSS Command said Abacha suffered what appeared to be a coitus-induced cardiac arrest.
He said the woman, who witnessed the incident, immediately boarded a flight to Lagos after Abacha’s death.
“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,'” Amachree wrote.
He said the woman gave a detailed account of the incident before he briefed the DSS Director in Abuja, after which she was flown back to the Federal Capital Territory.
Amachree maintained that Abacha died at about 4:05 a.m. on June 8, 1998, inside the Presidential Villa while with the woman.
The retired intelligence officer argued that the woman’s account remains the most accurate explanation of Abacha’s sudden death and dismisses years of speculation and conspiracy theories surrounding the incident.
Abacha ruled Nigeria as military Head of State from November 1993 until his sudden death at the age of 54 in June 1998, an event that has continued to fuel public debate for nearly three decades.
