[aristeides]

I wonder what else was going on in the world during the early July 1998 time frame?

Wasn't that around when Clinton made his first visit to Africa, with that huge entourage that included Betty Curry, Jesse Jackson, and Susan Rice (a tour which conspicuously omitted Nigeria, ostensibly because of its military government)?

[Wallaby]

Check out these stories on Abacha:

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Rattling The Rattler
 By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN  The New York Times
January 19, 1999, Tuesday, Late Edition - Final
Section A; Page 19; Column 6; Editorial Desk 

...No one quite knows how Nigeria's evil dictator Sani Abacha died last June at age 54, but the story that has made the rounds goes like this: Several Nigerian officers who finally got fed up with General Abacha's utterly venal and corrupt rule got together, imported three prostitutes from India, sent them to his villa with a poison, which he somehow ingested (One report says it may have been in his Viagra) and then dropped dead. The three prostitutes were back on a plane to India before General Abacha's body was cold. Whatever the details, a senior U.S. official privy to the intelligence told me: "Let's just say Abacha did not die a natural death and he did not die alone."

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NIGERIAN GOVERNMENT SAID EMBARRASSED BY US REPORT ON ABACHA'S DEATH

SOURCE: Radio Kudirat Nigeria, Voice of Democracy, in English 1915 gmt 15 Jul 98
Supplied by BBC Worldwide Monitoring
July 16, 1998, Thursday

Text of report by Nigerian opposition radio on 15th July
Military sources in Abuja have disclosed that the unelected regime has been rattled and embarrassed by a US government report indicating that the late General Sani Abacha may have been poisoned, and not have died as a result of a heart attack. The junta's official line has been that Abacha died a natural death. It is not clear why the US government has focused on Abacha's death but they did not words indistinct with this embarrassment over the junta's assassination of Bashorun Abiola in the presence of a visiting top US delegation in attempting to negotiate his release from four years of illegal activity.
Sources said the US government is still baffled as to how the junta had used its top officials in establishing a bogus alibi that Bashorun Abiola died a natural death. The admission by the USA that Abacha was poisoned confirms that the same junta officials who killed him assassinated Bashorun Abiola.