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Former Assistant Director of the Department of State Services (DSS), Dennis Amachree, has challenged Hamza Al-Mustapha, the former Chief Security Officer to late Head of State Gen. Sani Abacha, to make public the CCTV footage he claims to possess if he disputes the account of Abacha’s death contained in his recently published memoir.
Amachree issued the challenge while reacting to Al-Mustapha’s dismissal of claims in his book, DSS @ 40: My Journey Behind the Shield, in which he wrote that Abacha died in June 1998 after suffering what he described as a coitus-induced cardiac arrest.
Al-Mustapha had earlier rejected the account, alleging that the former DSS officer was acting out a script written 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 are not true,” Al-Mustapha had said.
Responding in an interview with The Nation, Amachree insisted that Al-Mustapha should substantiate his claims with evidence rather than attacking his person.
“If he says he knows what happened that night, let him release the CCTV footage,” Amachree said.
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The retired intelligence officer maintained that his memoir was not published without scrutiny, explaining that it underwent official vetting by the DSS before its release as part of activities marking the agency’s 40th anniversary.
“The book was vetted and approved by the DSS before publication,” he said.
Amachree added that the security agency invited him from the United States for the book launch, which was attended by senior DSS officials, state directors of the service and members of the diplomatic community.
He also dismissed Al-Mustapha’s reference to him as “a boy”, arguing that his career progression in the DSS placed him above the retired army officer in rank.
“I was seven years old when Nigeria gained independence. I retired as an assistant director, which in army terms is equivalent to a brigadier, while Al-Mustapha retired as a major,” he said.
The exchange is the latest in the growing controversy over the circumstances surrounding Abacha’s death in June 1998, with both former security officials offering conflicting accounts of the late military ruler’s final moments.
