Dennis Amachree, a former Assistant Director of the Department of State Services (DSS), has challenged Hamza Al-Mustapha, former Chief Security Officer to late military Head of State Sani Abacha, to release the closed-circuit television (CCTV) footage of Abacha’s final hours if he disputes the account contained in his recently published memoir.
Gatekeepers News reports that Amachree’s response followed Al-Mustapha’s rejection of claims made in the book, DSS @ 40: My Journey Behind the Shield, in which the retired DSS officer wrote that Abacha died in June 1998 after suffering a cardiac arrest during sexual intercourse.
Al-Mustapha dismissed the account, alleging that Amachree had been influenced to write falsehoods.
“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 said.
Reacting in an interview with The Nation, Amachree urged the former security chief to support his claims with evidence rather than personal attacks.
“If he says he knows what happened that night, let him release the CCTV footage,” he said.
Amachree also defended the credibility of his memoir, stating that it was vetted and approved by the DSS before publication as part of activities marking the agency’s 40th anniversary.
According to him, the DSS invited him from the United States for the book launch, which was attended by senior security officials, state directors of the service and members of the diplomatic corps.
The retired intelligence officer further dismissed Al-Mustapha’s description of him as “a boy,” arguing that his career progression within the DSS placed him above the retired army major in equivalent 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,” Amachree said.
The exchange marks the latest chapter in the public disagreement over the circumstances surrounding Abacha’s death, with both former security officials offering sharply conflicting accounts nearly three decades after the former military ruler’s demise.
