Former Chief Security Officer to the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha (Rtd), has dismissed claims that his former principal died during an intimate encounter with a woman, insisting he has CCTV footage of the ex-President’s final moments.
Al-Mustapha spoke on the sidelines of the 3rd General Hassan Usman Katsina Memorial Conference held at Arewa House, Kaduna, in reaction to fresh claims by a former Department of State Services operative, Dennis Amachree.
Amachree, who served as Assistant Director of Operations and Intelligence at the Lagos DSS Command at the time of Abacha’s death on June 8, 1998, made the claim in his newly released memoir, ‘DSS @40: My Journey Behind the Shield’.
According to Amachree, Abacha suffered a cardiac arrest at about 4:05 a.m. at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, during intercourse with a lady. He claimed the woman, described as a pharmacist, panicked after noticing Abacha had become unresponsive and stiff.
Amachree wrote: “She called out to him, but he was unresponsive and stiff. She checked his pulse; there was none.”
He further claimed the woman quickly dressed and told the soldier on guard that “Oga had asked for a car to take her back to her hotel,” after which she travelled to Lagos on an early morning flight before she could be questioned.
Amachree said he was later directed by DSS headquarters to locate and interrogate her in Lagos, quoting her as telling him: “I did not kill him, he died on top of me.”
He insisted her account remains the only true eyewitness account and that it puts an end to conspiracy theories that Abacha was poisoned with an apple by prostitutes.
“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,” Amachree said.
But reacting, Al-Mustapha described the claim as a “tissue of lies” fabricated for validation.
“The boy was asked by others to write those lies. I have all the CCTV footage of what happened in my custody, so what he said is not true,” Al-Mustapha said.
Al-Mustapha did not elaborate on the nature of the footage or say whether he intends to make it public.
This is not the first time Al-Mustapha has rejected the sex and poisoned-apple theories. In previous interviews with ThisDay, he maintained that Abacha’s health began to fail on June 7, 1998, shortly after shaking hands with a security operative who accompanied Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the Abuja International Airport.
He narrated that he noticed a change in Abacha’s countenance and informed the Aide-de-Camp, Lt. Col. Abdallah. Abacha was later given an injection by his doctor around 6 p.m. on June 8 and advised to rest, but was later receiving visitors including then FCT Minister, Lt. Gen. Jeremiah Useni, until about 3:35 a.m.
“At about 5 a.m., the security guards ran to my quarters to inform me that Abacha was very unstable. At first, I thought it was a coup attempt,” Al-Mustapha had said.
Abacha, who ruled Nigeria from November 17, 1993, until his sudden death on June 8, 1998, remains one of the most controversial figures in the nation’s history. Nearly 28 years after his death, the cause of his death continues to generate intense speculation, from cardiac arrest to poisoning theories.
Al-Mustapha has consistently maintained that what killed Abacha and Chief MKO Abiola, who died a month later on July 7, 1998, was from the same source, promising to reveal full details in his forthcoming memoirs.
