Former Chief Security Officer to the late Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha, has dismissed claims that the former military ruler died during an intimate encounter with a woman, insisting he possesses CCTV footage of Abacha’s final moments.
Speaking with journalists in Kaduna, Al-Mustapha described the allegation as false and accused the author of the claim of promoting a fabricated narrative orchestrated by unnamed individuals.
“The boy was asked to write the lies by others. I have all the CCTV footages of what happened in my custody, so what he said is not true,” Al-Mustapha said.
He urged Nigerians to disregard the account, arguing that it was unfair to make allegations against someone who could no longer defend himself.
“Just ignore his lies. It’s bad to say such things about someone that is dead,” he said.
“But I want to assure you that the author of the book is acting out a script. He is not acting alone.”
Al-Mustapha added that he would respond to the claims at an appropriate time.
“At the appropriate time, I will respond to these lies. You don’t tell your enemies your plans,” he said.
The controversy follows claims made by retired Department of State Services (DSS) operative Dennis Amachree in his recently released 348-page memoir titled DSS @ 40: My Journey Behind the Shield.
In the book, Amachree claimed that Abacha died in the early hours of June 8, 1998, after suffering what he described as a “coitus-induced cardiac arrest” while inside the Presidential Villa Guest House in Abuja.
According to the former DSS officer, the incident allegedly involved a Nigerian pharmacist.
“The lady pharmacist 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 wrote in the memoir.
Al-Mustapha has consistently rejected previous accounts of Abacha’s death. Over the years, he has maintained that the late military ruler died after shaking hands with a security operative attached to a visiting foreign dignitary, suggesting that foul play may have been involved.
General Sani Abacha ruled Nigeria as military Head of State from November 1993 until his death on June 8, 1998.
His sudden death remains one of the most controversial episodes in Nigeria’s political history, giving rise to multiple theories over the years.
Abacha’s death came less than a month before the death of Chief Moshood Kashimawo Olawale (MKO) Abiola, the presumed winner of the annulled June 12, 1993 presidential election, who died in government custody on July 7, 1998, while detained by the military regime.
Neither Al-Mustapha nor Amachree has presented publicly verifiable evidence to conclusively support their respective accounts, and the circumstances surrounding Abacha’s death continue to be the subject of public debate and historical scrutiny.
