The former Chief Security Officer to the late Nigerian military ruler Gen. Sani Abacha has dismissed recent claims regarding the final moments of the former Head of State.
Maj. Hamza Al-Mustapha (rtd.) labeled the account presented by former Department of State Services (DSS) operative Dennis Amachree as false, urging the public to disregard it.
Al-Mustapha made the comments on Saturday while speaking to journalists in Kaduna during the 3rd General Hassan Usman Katsina Memorial Conference at Arewa House.
His reaction follows public interest surrounding Amachree’s memoir, The Shadow Warrior, in which the retired intelligence officer offered his own version of the events surrounding Abacha’s sudden death on June 8, 1998.
Rejecting the narrative, Al-Mustapha claimed he possesses video evidence that refutes Amachree’s account.
“The boy was asked by others to write those lies. I have all the CCTV footage of what happened in my custody, so what he said is not true,” Al-Mustapha said, though he did not indicate whether he planned to release the recordings to the public.
He added that it was wrong to make unfounded allegations against a deceased leader who could no longer defend himself.
Gen. Abacha, who took power in a November 1993 military coup, died unexpectedly at the Presidential Villa in Abuja. While the government officially attributed his death to a sudden illness, the circumstances have remained the subject of intense debate, producing conflicting accounts from former military figures, diplomats, and intelligence officials over the past two decades.
Al-Mustapha, who served as Abacha’s chief security aide, spent over a decade in detention following the regime’s collapse before being acquitted of murder charges by the Court of Appeal in 2013. He has consistently defended the late military leader against public criticism.
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