Ex-DSS Director Claims Abacha Died of Cardiac Arrest, Clearing Decades of Rumours

A former Assistant Director of the Department of State Services, Dennis Amachree, has offered a new account detailing the circumstances surrounding the death of Nigeria’s former military Head of State, General Sani Abacha.

In his recently published memoir, DSS @40: My Journey Behind the Shield, Amachree dismissed long-held speculation and conspiracy theories such as poisoning stating that Abacha died of a cardiac arrest during an intimate encounter at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

Amachree, who served as Assistant Director of Operations and Intelligence at the Lagos DSS Command when Abacha died on June 8, 1998, detailed that the incident occurred around 4:05 a.m. According to the account, a female pharmacist who had accompanied her sister to Aso Rock was alone with the former leader when he suddenly became unresponsive.

After discovering that Abacha had no pulse, the woman left the presidential villa in a state of panic and boarded an early morning flight back to Lagos. Amachree recalled that following instructions from DSS headquarters, his team tracked down and interrogated the woman in Lagos, where she maintained that the former military ruler suffered a sudden medical emergency during their encounter.

The newly released account challenges nearly three decades of conflicting stories regarding the sudden demise of Abacha, who ruled Nigeria from November 1993 until his death in 1998. Amachree noted that the intelligence findings at the time remain the accurate position, effectively addressing the various conspiracy theories that have circulated over the years.