‘Unverified, Unconvincing’ – Former Minister Says No Evidence Sani Abacha Died During Sex

Former Minister of Petroleum Resources, Dan Etete, has rejected claims that former military Head of State, Gen. Sani Abacha, died during a sexual encounter, describing the account as unsupported by verifiable evidence.

Etete, who served in the Abacha administration and said he was a close friend of the late military ruler, was reacting to claims by a former State Security Service officer, Dennis Amachree, in his memoir, DSS @40: My Journey Behind the Shield.

Amachree had claimed that Abacha suffered a cardiac arrest during an intimate encounter in the early hours of June 8, 1998, at the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

But Etete, in a statement titled, “Twenty-Eight Years On, Still No Evidence,” questioned the basis of the account and demanded documentary proof.

The former minister asked for the identity and nationality of the woman allegedly involved, as well as medical and investigative records surrounding Abacha’s death.

He also questioned whether any post-mortem examination established the cause of death and whether there were signed records of the alleged interrogation of the woman.

“He tells us the time to the minute. He tells us the room. He tells us what was said. Twenty-eight years on, from memory, with nothing on paper behind any of it,” Etete said.

He further asked whether flight records, hotel registers and security duty logs existed to support the timeline described by Amachree.

According to him, such documents should ordinarily have formed part of the record if a sitting Head of State died under the circumstances alleged.

Etete also questioned why the woman was reportedly allowed to leave Nigeria if security agencies considered her central to the circumstances surrounding Abacha’s death.

“What is the so-called woman’s name, and what is her nationality? Why did you allow her to leave the country without filing a serious criminal investigation against her?” he asked.

He also demanded to know who authorised her release and departure.

Etete argued that the death of a Head of State should not be treated casually or reconstructed solely from one person’s memory decades later.

“I do not pretend the record of those years is beyond argument. It is not, and it will be argued over long after all of us are gone. But a man’s death is not entertainment, and a country’s history is not built on the unsupported memory of one man,” he said.

The former minister said he was not speaking as Abacha’s lawyer or spokesman but as someone who served in his government and knew him personally.

“I cannot tell you what is in Mr Amachree’s mind. I can tell you what is in his hands: nothing. No post-mortem. No file. No signature. No woman,” Etete said.

He described the account as “unverified, unsupported, and unconvincing” and argued that it should not be accepted without documentary evidence.

Etete’s comments followed an earlier rejection of Amachree’s version by Abacha’s former Chief Security Officer, Hamza Al-Mustapha.

Speaking with journalists in Kaduna in July, Al-Mustapha described the account as false and claimed he possessed evidence showing what happened at the Presidential Villa.

“I have all the CCTV footage of what happened in my custody, so what he said is not true,” he said.

Al-Mustapha, however, did not publicly release the footage.

In his memoir, Amachree said a woman who had been with Abacha realised during an intimate encounter that the military ruler had stopped responding.

He claimed she later left the Presidential Villa and travelled to Lagos before security authorities ordered that she be located and questioned.

According to Amachree, his team subsequently found the woman and brought her in for interrogation.

He said the account led him to conclude that Abacha died from a cardiac arrest during the encounter rather than poisoning.

The former military ruler seized power on November 17, 1993, and governed Nigeria until his death on June 8, 1998.

At the time, the Federal Government announced that he had died following a sudden illness.