Abdulsalami dismisses Abiola poisoning theory, questions circumstances of Abacha’s death

In his newly released autobiography, former Head of State Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar drops bombshell accounts of the suspicious circumstances surrounding both Abacha’s death and Abiola’s collapse in 1998, clearing the air on some things while making others murkier.

The Dead Men and the Man Who Knows

Nigeria’s 1998 is one of those years that refuses to stay buried. Two powerful men General Sani Abacha and Chief MKO Abiola died within weeks of each other under circumstances that Nigerians have debated ever since. Now, the man who was right in the middle of it all is talking. And honestly? It’s a lot.

According to The Punch, former Head of State Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar has released a 264-page autobiography titled Call of Duty, unveiled at Aso Rock Villa on his 84th birthday. Chapter by chapter, he’s pulling back the curtain on some of Nigeria’s most contested moments. And he didn’t come to play.

On Abiola: It Was His Heart, Not Poison

Let’s start with MKO. For decades, many Nigerians believed the June 12 hero was poisoned silenced before he could take power. Abdulsalami isn’t having it.

He says Abiola collapsed during a meeting with a visiting American delegation that included top US diplomats Tom Pickering and Susan Rice, and that an autopsy conducted by pathologists from four countries Nigeria, the US, the UK, and Canada concluded his death resulted from natural causes.

Abdulsalami also reveals that Abiola had been managing hypertension and a heart condition since at least 1994, when he was first detained, and that medical records from that period already showed an enlarged heart consistent with hypertensive cardiac disease. 

Drawing on Rice’s own 2019 memoir, Abdulsalami describes how Abiola began coughing during the meeting, complained of feeling hot, and eventually had to be carried out a doctor who was quickly summoned diagnosed a heart attack. He never made it.

Chilling? Yes. But Abdulsalami’s point is clear: there was no plot. The man was simply ill, and the timing was tragically cruel.

On Abacha: Something Was Very Fishy

Now here’s where it gets really interesting. While Abdulsalami clears the air on Abiola, he does the opposite for Abacha openly admitting the whole thing felt off.

He reveals that he and then Army Chief Lt-Gen. Ishaya Bamaiyi were mysteriously locked inside a waiting room at the Presidential Villa for nearly an hour before anyone told them Abacha had died and when the door finally opened, it wasn’t an aide who came in, but the Inspector-General of Police.

Abdulsalami says a faction of Abacha’s “inner caucus” had already been scheming to install their preferred successor Naval Chief Admiral Mike Akhigbe and used the trip to Kano for Abacha’s burial as a deliberate distraction to finalise their plans while key players were out of town.

He says the burial to Kano was essentially a decoy, and that while he and others were away, those left behind in Abuja were busy trying to install a new Head of State without going through proper channels. It was Abdulsalami himself who eventually won the vote to become Nigeria’s 11th Head of State.