Ghana's Coups, 1966–1983
Every coup and the executions of 1979 in one place.
Ghana-Net.com · People of Ghana · Heads of State · 1936–1979
At twenty-nine he helped overthrow Kwame Nkrumah. At thirty-three he was head of state. At thirty-four he handed power to an elected government and went home to farm. For the next nine years he campaigned against the soldiers who came after him, and in June 1979 the voters of Mampong sent him to Parliament. Eight days later he was tied to a stake at the Teshie range and shot. Akwasi Afrifa's life runs through every contradiction of Ghana's military years.
Akwasi Amankwaa Afrifa was born on 24 April 1936 at Mampong in Ashanti, the seat of one of the great Asante paramount stools, north of Kumasi. He went to the Presbyterian boys' boarding school in Mampong and then to Adisadel College in Cape Coast, one of the elite schools of the colony.
He joined the army in the year of independence, 1957, and was sent to Britain for officer training at Mons Officer Cadet School and the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. Like many young Ghanaian officers he served with the United Nations in the Congo in the early 1960s. He came home with the belief, shared by many of his generation of officers, that Nkrumah's one-party state was ruining the country and politicising the army.
By 1966 Afrifa was a major and training officer with the Second Infantry Brigade at Kumasi, under Colonel Emmanuel Kotoka. With the police commissioner John Harlley they planned the coup. While Nkrumah was abroad on his way to Hanoi, Afrifa helped lead the troops down from the north to Accra in the night of 23 to 24 February 1966. By morning the government had fallen.
The young plotters knew they were too junior to rule alone. They invited the general Nkrumah had sacked, Joseph Ankrah, to chair the new National Liberation Council. Afrifa sat on it as its youngest member and became Commissioner for Finance, at twenty-nine, in a country buried in debt.
Kotoka: his partner in the coup was killed in the failed counter-coup of April 1967. The airport long bore Kotoka's name; it is now Accra International Airport.
Within months Afrifa published a book, The Ghana Coup, 24th February 1966. It is rare for a coup-maker to write his own account so soon, and it is revealing: an emotional mix of personal memoir, Asante pride, admiration for the British army that trained him, and fury at Nkrumah, whom he accused of betraying the army and the constitution.
Why it still matters: the book shows how the officers of 1966 saw themselves, as rescuers of the nation rather than rebels against it. That self-image was copied by every coup-maker who followed, including the one who would order Afrifa's own execution thirteen years later.
When Ankrah resigned on 2 April 1969 over the bribery scandal around the Nigerian businessman Francis Nzeribe, the NLC made Afrifa its chairman and head of state. His main task was the one the council had promised from the start: to hand power back to civilians.
A new constitution was drafted, the ban on party politics was lifted, and elections were held on 29 August 1969. The CPP, still banned, could not stand. The Progress Party of Kofi Busia, heir to the Danquah tradition, won a large majority, and Busia became Prime Minister on 1 October 1969.
Soldiers did not step aside completely. Until a president could be chosen, the powers of head of state passed to a three-man Presidential Commission: Afrifa as chairman, with Harlley and the army commander Albert Ocran. It sat from September 1969 to 7 August 1970. Afrifa then retired from the army with the rank of lieutenant-general, and in August 1970 Edward Akufo-Addo, one of the Big Six, became ceremonial president.
The record: Afrifa is one of the few soldiers in Africa's first decade of independence who took power and then actually gave it up on schedule. It did not save the Second Republic: in January 1972 the army came back under Ignatius Acheampong.
Afrifa went home to Mampong to farm, and was enstooled as a chief there; he was widely known by his title Okatakyie. He did not stay quiet. When Acheampong overthrew Busia, Afrifa was arrested and detained for most of 1972.
In 1977 and 1978 Acheampong pushed his plan for Union Government ("Unigov"), a system with no political parties and a permanent role for the army. Afrifa helped lead the opposition to it through the People's Movement for Freedom and Justice, alongside old politicians of both traditions. The Unigov referendum of March 1978 was widely seen as rigged, and in July 1978 Acheampong was pushed aside by his deputy Fred Akuffo, who promised elections for 1979.
Afrifa stood in them. He joined the United National Convention and contested Mampong North.
On 4 June 1979, two weeks before the vote, junior officers led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings seized power and formed the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC). They promised to let the elections go ahead, but first to "clean house" of the senior officers they blamed for a decade of corruption.
The election was held on 18 June 1979, and Afrifa won Mampong North. He had already been picked up at his farm. He was tried in secret by a special court, with no proper defence, and on 26 June 1979, eight days after the voters elected him, he was executed by firing squad at the Teshie military range near Accra. Reports say he did not die at the first volley.
Three heads of state in ten days: in June 1979 Ghana executed three of its former rulers. The 1992 Constitution later gave the members of the AFRC immunity for what they did in those months; see the Fourth Republic. Mampong North got a new MP at a by-election that September.
Every coup and the executions of 1979 in one place.
The general Afrifa and Kotoka put in charge.
Shot on the same day. And Acheampong, shot ten days earlier.
Every head of state and president from independence to today.
Also: Hilla Limann, who won the 1979 presidency Afrifa's party contested; the three murdered judges, whose deaths in 1982 followed the same logic of revolutionary "justice"; People of Ghana and the 1,000-year timeline.
Afrifa helped teach Ghana's army that it could overthrow an elected government, and he was killed by men who had learned the lesson. That is the bitter circle of his life. But he also did something most coup-makers never do: he kept the promise to hand back power, and then spent the rest of his life arguing, as a civilian and a chief, that soldiers should stay out of politics. Whatever the NLC's finances showed, his secret trial and execution eight days after winning an election were not justice. They were the same contempt for the vote that he had shown in 1966, turned against him.
Verified: 29 September 2026. Birth and death dates, his schooling, the NLC and Presidential Commission dates, the 1969 election and his election for Mampong North in June 1979 follow standard biographies and parliamentary records. The execution dates of June 1979 follow published records; the claim that he survived the first volley is a report and is given as such. His chieftaincy title is given as it is popularly known. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.