No, Abacha didn’t die in bed with a woman

*Dennis Amachree Misrepresented; how He Died

By Tony Eluemunor

How did the former Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha die? I had focused on the answer since mid-1999 when I arrived Abuja as a Guardian newspaper correspondent intending to write a book on the presidency.

So, I easily knew that Mr. Dennis Amachree, a former Assistant Director (Operations) in the Department of State Security (DSS) muddied the waters some more with his version of how the military head of State, General Sani Abacha, died. The title of his book, “DSS @40: My Journey Behind the Shield”, does appear like an authorized institutional story as opposed to his own personal story when he related that Abacha was in bed with a female pharmacist when he suffered a heart attack. But he didn’t write the Nigerian version of “Every Spy A Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community” published in 1990, containing authentic authorized stories of Israel’s under-cover ventures.  Amachree told his own personal story, and he failed check what his superiors at Abuja discovered about Abacha’s death.

 Here is what is wrong with Amachree’s story about Abacha: ”At approximately 2.40 am, shortly after Gen. Useni left, Abacha’s girlfriend, an Igbo lady (name withheld), arrived at the Aso Rock Guest House from the Nicon Nogs Hilton Hotel,” excerpts from the book read.

“With her was her younger sister, a pharmacist who was in Abuja for a conference. The Head of State had just bought his girlfriend a new SUV, and they decided to stop by to say hello to ‘Oga’.

“Abacha was taken with the younger sister, and after a short while, the girlfriend returned to the hotel, leaving the pharmacist alone with the Head of State.

“At about 4.05 am, as they were getting intimate, the pharmacist realized Abacha had stopped moving. She called out to him, but he was unresponsive and stiff. She checked his pulse; there was none.

“In a state of panic, she quickly dressed and left the guest house, telling the soldier in guard duty that ‘Oga’ had asked for a car to take her back to her hotel.

“The soldier, unaware of the gravity of the situation, promptly arranged for her transportation. She returned to the Hilton, and after telling her sister what had happened, was quickly driven to the Abuja Airport to catch the 7 a.m., Okada Airline flight to Lagos.

Then Amachree interrogated the pharmacist in Lagos, as the DSS Director of Operations at the national headquarters, Abuja, instructed him:  “The first thing she said to me was: ‘I did not kill him, he died on top of me.”  Then Amachree contacted the Director of National Operations in Abuja and dispatched the lady back to Abuja immediately. Finish!

Actually, Mr. Amachree’s tale terribly indicted the DSS! Any journalist who would base his conclusion on such a one-sided story, totally unverified, completely and crazily uncross-checked, would have had his story thrown back at him to improve it. Please, see it this way; he had just interviewed a lady who claimed the Head of State died during a tryst with her. And he, an Assistant Director in a foremost national security agency, accepted that as gospel truth. What if the woman had actually poisoned Abacha but lied that the man died while having illicit sex? What if the woman worked for a foreign secret agency, say the CIA? And how could this single Nigerian (Igbo) lady have turned to two apple- bearing Indian women?

Amachree alone would never have had the means to know if the woman was a secret agent working for another country. Worse still, Amachree who sent the lady back to Abuja for further interrogation disdained to tell his readers whether the DSS final report agreed totally with his hasty and unprofessional conclusion or not. Showing that ignorance could actually be bliss, he rated his unverified conclusion above those of the DSS headquarters’ final determination of what killed Abacha.

When Abacha died on June 8, 1998, the Director of National Operations (whom Amachree mentioned in the book) – not by name but by the official title –  was Barr Mike Ejiofor; a well-known national security analyst. Amachree then boasted that the lady’s version of events trumps the various theories, including stories about “imported Indian girls and poisoned apples,” that have circulated since Abacha’s death and “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”.

This is unjustified self-glorification and national bamboozle taken to the “max”, as netizens would quip, by Amachree who was an Assistant Director, Travel Control (overseeing Airports, Sea Ports and Land Borders) and who left the DSS in 1999. So, the most charitable one could be to Amachcree is to wave off his claim as that of an ill-informed ex-agent who was blissfully ignorant of the concerted efforts at the controlling heights of the DSS, National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Military Intelligence and coordinated by the office of the National Security Adviser (NSA) over Abacha’s death. I assume Amachree had no role in the investigations but was contacted to watch the Airports for that lady or some people being investigated.

Worst of all, Amachree may never have known of the conclusive findings…which I now lay bare here. That Amachree never referred to the findings of this his boss on how Abacha died is Amachree’s greatest self –indictment. I phone Barr Ejiofor, a big brother, often and I have phoned him on reading Amachree, but will not bring him into this discussion, especially because I certainly knew what happened by year 2000.  When I became Daily Independent newspaper’s Abuja Bureau Chief that year, I met the late Mr. Onu Adegbe, who was the Diet Newspaper’s Abuja Bureau Chief to recover what I could from their Zungeru Close, off Jos Street, Garki Area 3, Abuja, office. Onu was close to Mr. Daniel Kanu, who organised the pro-Abacha Two Million Man March and Youths Say Yeah for Abacha. Onu and Kanu were in the second car allowed into the Aso Rock Presidential Villa after Abacha’s death.

The first car was Gen. Ibrahim babangida’s …that was after Gen. Jerry Useni’s motorcade was turned back. Kanu’s car followed IBB’s which Mustapha directed to the Akinola Aguda House. That was where Kanu had the chance to ask the question that had been agitating his mind since one of Abacha’s daughters informed him at 6: AM, while crying: “Baba yamutu” (Hausa for Baba has died). Mustapha confirmed the death to him and Onu Adegbe and they reviewed the events of that fatal night.

Furthermore, I learnt from a former NSA office  top gun, the conclusion of the various agencies’ investigations:  Though two women, Filipinos and not Indians, had visited Abacha that night, the informed opinion (in the absence of an autopsy) was that he died after an asthma attack. As he did not plan to stay away from home for long, he did not take his anti-asthma inhaler with him. So just when he was about to leave the female visitors, he was said to have slumped at the steps, fully clothed, yes he was certainly fully clothed.

It is almost certain that nothing immoral happened between the late General and the Filipino damsels that fateful night as he was rather unwell, and his doctor had plied him with steroids, as usual. That enabled him to leave his sick bed after some sleep, welcomed some visitors, attended to his very last official duty – signing and giving a cheque to late Air Commodore Sampson Emeka Omerua, the then Minister for Information, Youth, Sports and Culture, to enable the nation’s football team fly to South Korea for a match.  Really, Abacha was very ill even as he terrorized the nation and exasperated the West; he had diabetes and liver sclerosis.

Signs of trouble appeared well before Abacha died; on returning from the Airport after seeing off Yasser Arafat, in the evening of Sunday 7th June, 1998, Abacha’s health deteriorated and his doctor was summoned by 6 p.m and gave him an injection and advised Abacha to have a bed rest. He did, but rose up by 9 p.m and began to receive guests.

His last visitor, the late General Jeremiah Timbut Useni, the then Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, remained with him till

about 3.35 a.m, so Abacha didn’t spend that night carousing with women. Between that time and the 5 a.m. when Abacha’s Chief Security Officer, Major Hamza Mustapha (rtd) was informed about Abacha’s health emergency, was what Amachree termed a critical unaccounted for period.

But the Abuja investigations did not leave open any unaccounted for period, though Amachree didn’t know it. He had no way of verifying the story he claimed that lady told him. And this is tragic for he published the information he wasn’t in position to verify as a fact and so fouled up Nigeria’s institutional knowledge.

If Abacha himself had struggled out and poked his face outside and sent the soldiers on duty at his Guest House to rouse and summon Mustapha, the soldiers would have said so. Also, he didn’t phone Mustapha. So, who informed the soldiers who in turn informed Mustapha that Abacha needed help? This is the question Amachree didn’t address.

Answer: The female visitors who were with Abacha did. But they were not “imported prostitutes”. Those two Filipinos who were mistaken for Indians were old time visitors to the presidential villa. They grew up in Kano, a city with a large Asian population.

So, what killed Abacha? Though Abacha was lethally ill, he was pushed off the cliff and into the abyss. Abacha’s last public assignment was the Abuja Airport departure formalities for the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, in the evening. In Arafat’s entourage was a Palestinian, who Nigerian security agencies identified as a double-agent – who was collaborating with the Americans. A highly-placed security source explained that it was during the airport formalities that the double-agent tapped the head of his “special” pen repeatedly and dropped some poison on Abacha as he introduced members of Arafat’s entourage, to shake hands with Abacha, during airport formalities; perhaps something that could react fatally against the medicine he was taking for any of his long illnesses.

A review of the video recording showed the double-agent undoing Abacha – and such video reviews and other security issues were carried out thoroughly after Abacha’s death to determine what killed him. The NIA

took that task very seriously because that organization was at war with the global West in its attempt to thwart their numerous efforts to bump Abacha off. But the West succeeded through that man Arafat brought to Nigeria. This is how the handshake option of the cause of Abacha’s death emerged.

Arafat himself died in France in 2004 a month after falling ill in his besieged West Bank compound. Arafat’s widow, Suha, cried out that her husband was poisoned. Unlike in Abacha’s case, Swiss forensic experts exhumed and examined his body in 2012, tested his clothes, personal effects, and grave site (“soil that absorbed his leaked bodily fluids”). A radioactive product, that only nuclear powers have, Polonium-210, “at least 18 times higher than normal” was found.

No, Amachree, no. Abacha didn’t die on top of a woman! And this conclusion, unlike your own, wasn’t based on one agent’s opinion but on the concerted efforts of the relevant Nigerian security agencies.

Tony Eluemunor, a veteran journalist took details of Abacha’s death from Chapter 5 of his unpublished book: “Audacity of Hypocrisy; 24 Years of Nigerian Leadership – 1999 to 2025”.

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