A former Assistant Director of the Department of State Services, Dennis Amachree, claimed that late Gen. Sani Abacha died from cardiac arrest during an intimate encounter. Amachree made the revelation in his newly released memoir.
Amachree served as Assistant Director of Operations and Intelligence at the Lagos DSS Command when Abacha died in June 1998. He stated that the incident occurred at about 4:05 a.m. at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.
According to Amachree, an Igbo lady who was Abacha’s girlfriend arrived at the Aso Rock Guest House around 2:40 a.m. with her younger sister, a pharmacist in Abuja for a conference. The girlfriend later left for her hotel, leaving the pharmacist with Abacha.
“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.
Amachree explained that the pharmacist panicked and left the villa. She told the soldier on guard duty that Abacha had asked for a car to take her back to her hotel. She then travelled to Lagos on an early morning flight.
Security officials later traced and interrogated her. “I did not kill him, he died on top of me,” Amachree quoted the woman as saying during questioning.
Amachree dismissed long standing rumours of poisoned apples or assassination. He argued that the pharmacist’s account ended the conspiracy theories.
“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 stated.
Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, Abacha’s Chief Security Officer at the time, received information about the situation around 5 a.m. Efforts to question the woman followed, but she had already departed.
Abacha ruled Nigeria from November 1993 until his death on June 8, 1998. His sudden passing sparked speculation for nearly three decades.
Investigators noted the absence of an autopsy. Competing accounts continued to circulate. Amachree’s memoir provided one of the most detailed insider perspectives on the events.
