Why There’s Doubt Abacha Died Of Natural Causes – His Personal Doctor
, Professor Sadiq Suleiman, who was the personal physician former Head of State, General Sani Abacha has revealed that no one could say for sure that Abacha was poisoned by some women with apple as no autopsy was done on his corpse.
Addressing newsmen recently, Professor Wali, while relieving detail of June 7, 1998, the day Abacha died, Professor Wali said: ”Abacha was generally healthy though he had some health issues.
“He was treated and responded very well. He didn’t have any heart-related diseases at that time.”
”Around 6 am I had a phone call from his security officers, and they said, “please come, come to
the villa, come urgently!”
Before I even could get ready, they came and picked me. I had no idea what it all was about”.
”I arrived then I saw chief security there and he said “doctor come in, please, come in!” We all rushed
and I just saw the president.
“There was another doctor who came earlier, resuscitating him.
“Abacha was in the sitting room. He was on the couch. He was in his normal work clothes. I didn’t panic. I’ve seen a lot of serious problems before in my practice, but to affect him was very tough, definitely.
“I joined and we did as much as we could to resuscitate him. But I realised that he was dead because he was firming. We just continued resuscitation and even injected some things, but it didn’t work”.
”I said, sorry – there’s nothing we can do. Immediately the security officer took over, and he invited all
the service chiefs to come to Abuja. Most of them were based in Lagos”.
Professor Wali said he had tried to carry out an autopsy to ascertain the cause of death, but his family declined and buried him immediately according to Islam law: ”I still tried to take some samples
of blood and urine and hair and things like that, just thinking for the future chemical tests.”
”It’s very difficult to say [whether he died of natural causes]. The blood test we did, has shown some raised cardiac enzymes [proteins that are released into the blood by dying heart muscles].That’s why we thought maybe it was cardiac attack”
