The National Liberation Council: Ghana After Nkrumah

By 1965, Kwame Nkrumah's Ghana had become a one-party state suffocating under its own contradictions. The Preventive Detention Act of 1958 had imprisoned over 400 political opponents without trial. A rigged 1964 referendum declared Nkrumah president for life. The economy, once the envy of Africa with £200 million in foreign reserves at independence, now groaned under mounting debt as ambitious industrialisation projects like the Volta Aluminium Company (VALCO) and state farms devoured resources without proportionate returns. The cedi had been devalued, cocoa prices were in decline, and consumer goods were scarce.

The conspiracy against Nkrumah coalesced around Colonel Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka of the 2nd Infantry Brigade in Kumasi and Police Commissioner John Willie Kofi Harlley. Both men had connections to the Ewe ethnic group from the Volta Region — Kotoka born in Alakple on 26 September 1926, Harlley from Anloga. Anthony K. Deku, Commissioner of CID, provided intelligence assets. Major Akwasi Amankwaa Afrifa, born 24 April 1936 in Mampong, Ashanti, served as the operation's field commander. Francis Kwashie later admitted the conspirators lacked "the faintest idea" of how to govern after seizing power.

On 21 February 1966, Nkrumah departed Accra for Beijing on a peace mission to end the Vietnam War. Three days later, at dawn on 24 February, Kotoka's 2nd Infantry Brigade completed a 270-kilometre overnight march from Kumasi. By 5:30 AM, soldiers had seized Flagstaff House, the seat of government, overcoming resistance from the President's Own Guard Regiment (POGR), a 1,200-strong force loyal to Nkrumah. Kotoka broadcast the takeover on Radio Ghana.

The timing was deliberate. Nkrumah was en route to Hanoi via Beijing, carrying proposals to end the Vietnam War — a mission that kept him thousands of kilometres from Accra. CIA documents declassified decades later would reveal that American intelligence had been tracking the conspiracy. Robert Komer of the National Security Council wrote to McGeorge Bundy in May 1965 expressing hope that the Ghanaian military would "move against" Nkrumah. When the coup succeeded, the US State Department was among the first to recognise the new government. The Soviet Union, Cuba, and Guinea condemned it as an imperialist plot. In Conakry, President Sékou Touré offered Nkrumah asylum and the symbolic title of co-president of Guinea, a position Nkrumah would hold until his death from prostate cancer in Bucharest, Romania, on 27 April 1972.