Retired Assistant Director of the Department of State Services (DSS), Dennis Amachree, has strongly rejected journalist Tony Eluemunor’s account of the death of former military Head of State, General Sani Abacha, describing the claims as completely false and misleading.
Amachree said Eluemunor’s version of events contained several factual errors and wrongly mentioned him in an attempt to give credibility to the story. According to him, the journalist’s account was based on inaccurate information and should not be taken as a true reflection of what happened.
The former DSS officer made the remarks after former Chief Security Officer to General Abacha, Major Hamza Al-Mustapha (retd.), dismissed claims made in Amachree’s newly released book, DSS @40: My Journey Behind the Shield. In the book, Amachree alleged that Abacha died after suffering a heart attack during sexual activity in the early hours of June 8, 1998.
Al-Mustapha had earlier described Amachree’s account as false and urged Nigerians not to believe the claims made in the book. The disagreement has sparked fresh public debate over the circumstances surrounding Abacha’s death, nearly three decades after the incident.
Speaking during an interview on Arise News, Amachree said he would not reveal every detail of the investigation carried out by the DSS following Abacha’s death. He explained that some parts of the investigation remain sensitive and that he would not discuss how certain individuals were questioned, detained and later released.
He, however, insisted that Eluemunor’s account was full of inaccuracies.
“One thing I have to tell you is this: I am not discussing the full investigation,” Amachree said, adding that he would not go into details about the women who were brought to Abuja, questioned by security officials and later released.
Amachree accused the journalist of trying to present himself as someone with inside knowledge of intelligence operations.
According to him, Eluemunor falsely claimed that he was stationed at the airport to stop a woman who was allegedly trying to flee after Abacha’s death. Amachree said the claim could not be true because he had left his airport assignment several years before the events being discussed.
He also challenged another part of the story which claimed that he reported directly to former DSS Director Mike Ejiofor. Amachree explained that Ejiofor was his junior officer and never served as Director of Operations at the DSS national headquarters, making the claim impossible.
He argued that such obvious mistakes showed that the entire account lacked credibility and was built on false assumptions rather than verified facts.
Amachree further dismissed long-standing stories linking Abacha’s death to apples and Indian women, saying such narratives had been repeatedly circulated without evidence. He maintained that many of the popular stories surrounding the late military ruler’s death were fabricated and should not be accepted as historical facts without proof.
He concluded by saying that Eluemunor should focus on writing fictional intelligence or detective stories instead of presenting unverified claims as factual accounts of historical events.
