Yasser Arafat's Last Audience with Sani Abacha

On the afternoon of Sunday 7 June 1998 the PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, en route from Algiers to the OAU Council of Ministers meeting in Ouagadougou, made an unscheduled stopover at Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, and was received by General Sani Abacha at the Aso Rock Presidential Villa. The two leaders held an hour-long meeting — substantive content never disclosed — and posed for the Nigerian News Agency photographer in what would become the last public photograph of Abacha alive. Arafat departed for Ouagadougou the same evening. In the early hours of 8 June 1998 Abacha was pronounced dead in his Aso Rock bedroom, officially of a heart attack, and the Long 1990s began to end.