Ghana's Coups, 1966–1983
Every coup from Ankrah's to Rawlings's, and the executions.
Ghana-Net.com · People of Ghana · Heads of State · 1915–1992
He was the first African officer in the Gold Coast army, a war hero in the Congo, and the man Nkrumah sacked because he did not trust him. Eight months later soldiers overthrew Nkrumah and asked Ankrah to lead the country. He ruled Ghana for three years as its first military head of state, hosted the last peace talks before the Nigerian civil war, and fell over a few thousand cedis and an opinion poll. His story is the story of how Ghana's soldiers learned that they could take power.
Joseph Arthur Ankrah was born in Accra on 18 August 1915, a Ga from the old town. At the Wesleyan Methodist school his classmates called him Ankrah Patapaa for his habit of winning every argument and taking charge. He went on to Accra Academy, played good football, finished school in 1937 and joined the civil service.
In 1939 he joined the Gold Coast Regiment and served in the Second World War with the Royal West African Frontier Force, rising to warrant officer. In 1946 he was sent to an officer cadet school in Britain, and in February 1947 he graduated as the first African commissioned officer of the Gold Coast army. In a force still commanded by British officers, every promotion after that was a first.
When the Congo fell apart weeks after independence in 1960, Nkrumah sent Ghanaian troops to serve with the United Nations. Colonel Ankrah commanded a brigade in Kasai, and in 1961 he was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry.
The Lumumba story: Ghanaian accounts tell that during the chaos in Léopoldville in 1960 Ankrah stood between the Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba and soldiers who wanted to kill him. It is often repeated and hard to verify in detail; we give it as the account told in Ghana. Lumumba was murdered in January 1961 all the same.
Back home he was promoted brigadier and in 1961 became the first commander of the Ghana Army, then major-general and Deputy Chief of Defence Staff.
By the mid-1960s Nkrumah ruled a one-party state and trusted the regular army less and less. He built up the President's Own Guard Regiment, better paid and better armed than the army, and relied on security services loyal to him personally. Senior officers resented it.
In 1965 Nkrumah forced Ankrah and the Chief of Defence Staff, Major-General Stephen Otu, into retirement, suspecting them of plotting. Whether they were plotting then is not proven. What is certain is that the dismissal turned a respected general into a man with nothing to lose, and made him the obvious figurehead for the officers who were.
Ankrah did not plan the coup. It was organised by Colonel Emmanuel Kotoka, Major Akwasi Afrifa and the police chief John Harlley, while Nkrumah was on his way to Hanoi via Beijing. In the early hours of 24 February 1966 troops moved on Accra. The President's guard fought at Flagstaff House, and the soldiers seized Broadcasting House to announce the end of the government.
The plotters needed a senior, respected name to lead them. They chose the general Nkrumah had sacked. Ankrah became chairman of the National Liberation Council (NLC), eight men from the army and police, and head of state. Crowds celebrated in Accra and Nkrumah's statues were pulled down. Nkrumah never returned; he lived in exile in Guinea and died in 1972.
The American question: declassified US documents show Washington knew a coup was coming and welcomed it; how far the United States helped is still argued. On our sister site, read Ankrah's letter to the American president, 1966. And Fathia Nkrumah left for Egypt with the children within days.
Nigeria was sliding towards civil war. On 4 and 5 January 1967 Ankrah brought the two sides, Nigeria's military ruler Yakubu Gowon and the Eastern Region's governor Odumegwu Ojukwu, to Ghana, to the hill town of Aburi above Accra. They signed what became known as the Aburi Accord.
What happened next: each side read the agreement differently, and it was never carried out. In May 1967 the east declared itself Biafra, and the war that followed killed perhaps a million people. Aburi remains the moment when peace was nearly possible. More on the town: aburi.ghana-net.com.
The NLC had promised to return power to civilians, and elections were set for August 1969. The council hired a Nigerian businessman, Francis Nzeribe, to run an opinion poll on who Ghanaians wanted to lead them. The poll put Ankrah on top, ahead of Busia and Afrifa.
Then it emerged that Nzeribe had paid Ankrah money. Ankrah admitted receiving it for political purposes, and a commission of inquiry later found he had taken about 6,000 cedis. On 2 April 1969 he resigned, and Afrifa took over. Many in Ghana suspected the scandal was also a convenient way for rivals in the NLC to remove a chairman who seemed ready to stay on as a civilian politician.
What followed: Busia's Progress Party won the elections of August 1969. Within months his government issued the Aliens Compliance Order, and in 1972 the soldiers came back under Ignatius Acheampong.
Unlike Afrifa, Acheampong and Fred Akuffo, Ankrah was not tried or shot when Rawlings took power in 1979. He lived quietly in Accra, devoted to football as patron of Accra Hearts of Oak, whose home ground is the Accra Sports Stadium.
He died in Accra on 25 November 1992, aged 77, three weeks after the first presidential election of the Fourth Republic. The first soldier to take power in Ghana lived just long enough to see the country vote again.
Every coup from Ankrah's to Rawlings's, and the executions.
Every head of state and president from independence to today.
The young major of 1966 who succeeded Ankrah. Then Acheampong and Akuffo.
And on MyGhana2027: why he matters for Ghana 70.
Also: People of Ghana and the 1,000-year timeline.
Ankrah was a capable soldier and, by the standards of the rulers who came after him, a mild one. He did not plan the coup, he handed power back roughly on schedule, and he left office without bloodshed. But his NLC set the pattern that cost Ghana the next twenty-five years: that when soldiers dislike a government, they can remove it, and the country will cheer. Every coup that followed, and every execution of 1979, grew out of 24 February 1966. Ankrah's fall over a poll and a bribe was small. The precedent he fronted was not.
Verified: 29 September 2026. Birth and death dates, his commission in 1947, the Military Cross, command of the Ghana Army in 1961, dismissal in 1965, the NLC and OAU chairmanship dates, and the resignation of 2 April 1969 over payments from Francis Nzeribe follow standard biographies and Ghanaian records. The Lumumba episode is given as Ghanaian tradition. The extent of US involvement in the 1966 coup remains disputed and is presented as such. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.