*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
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