Nkrumah overthrown
Army and police seize power while Nkrumah is abroad. The National Liberation Council takes over.
Ghana-Net.com · History · 1966–1992
For a quarter of a century after Nkrumah fell, Ghana was ruled mostly by soldiers. Four successful coups, several failed ones, three former heads of state before a firing squad, and a revolution that sentenced its own opponents to death. This is the sequence — in order, with the names, and without the slogans of any side.
Army and police seize power while Nkrumah is abroad. The National Liberation Council takes over.
Junior officers attack Flagstaff House. General Kotoka is killed. The leaders are executed.
Busia's elected government is overthrown after little more than two years.
The military council removes its own leader and promises a return to civilian rule.
Junior ranks free Flight Lieutenant Rawlings from trial. Eight senior officers, three of them former heads of state, are executed.
Rawlings returns and overthrows the elected government of Hilla Limann. He will rule for nineteen years.
The most serious attempt to overthrow the PNDC. Public Tribunals pass death sentences on participants.
A new constitution, approved in 1992, begins the longest period of civilian rule in Ghana's history.
Every head of state in order, on our sister site: Leaders of Ghana — from independence to today.
By the mid-1960s Ghana was a one-party state. Opponents were held without trial, the economy was in trouble, and Nkrumah had survived more than one attempt on his life.
A grenade attack at Kulungugu in 1962 and a shooting at Flagstaff House in 1964 had made Nkrumah suspicious of everyone around him. After the 1963 treason trial acquitted some of the accused, he set the verdict aside and removed the judges — see Edward Akufo-Addo. J. B. Danquah died in detention in 1965.
On 24 February 1966, while Nkrumah was on his way to Hanoi via Beijing, units of the army under Colonel Emmanuel Kotoka and Major Akwasi Afrifa, with the police under J. W. K. Harlley, seized Accra. There was fighting at Flagstaff House. The coup was announced on radio from Broadcasting House. Crowds celebrated in the streets; Nkrumah never returned to Ghana alive.
The National Liberation Council, headed by Lieutenant-General Joseph Ankrah, ruled until 1969. Ankrah resigned that year over a bribery scandal and Afrifa took over, handing power to the elected government of Kofi Abrefa Busia in 1969.
A document worth reading: Ankrah's letter to the American President, 1966. Nkrumah's own story: Dr Kwame Nkrumah.
On 17 April 1967 a small group of junior officers led by Lieutenant Samuel Arthur tried to overthrow the NLC in an operation later known as "Guitar Boy". They attacked Flagstaff House and seized Broadcasting House. General Kotoka, one of the leaders of the 1966 coup, was killed.
The attempt collapsed within hours. Arthur and Lieutenant Moses Yeboah were tried and publicly executed by firing squad in May 1967. It set a pattern: from now on, a failed coup could cost your life.
Kotoka's name was later given to Accra's airport, now called Accra International Airport.
The Second Republic lasted just over two years.
Busia's government faced falling cocoa prices, debt and unpopular austerity. In December 1971 the cedi was sharply devalued. On 13 January 1972 Colonel Ignatius Kutu Acheampong took power and set up the National Redemption Council, later reorganised as the Supreme Military Council.
His early "Operation Feed Yourself" was popular. What followed was not: shortages, corruption, and the infamous practice of kalabule — profiteering and black-market trading that became a way of life. His plan for a permanent "Union Government" of soldiers and civilians was pushed through a disputed referendum in 1978.
On 5 July 1978 his own colleagues removed him. Lieutenant-General Fred Akuffo took over and promised elections for 1979.
On 15 May 1979 a young air force officer, Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings, led a failed mutiny and was put on trial. His defence — an attack on corruption in the officer class — made him a hero to the ranks. On 4 June 1979 junior soldiers broke him out and seized power. The Armed Forces Revolutionary Council announced a "house-cleaning".
What followed is still the most controversial episode in Ghana's history. Senior officers were tried by secret military courts and shot at the Teshie military range:
Eight men, three of them former heads of state, were executed in ten days. The AFRC went ahead with the planned elections and on 24 September 1979 handed power to Dr Hilla Limann and the Third Republic.
Two views that still divide Ghana. For some, 1979 was a necessary purge of a corrupt officer class. For others, it was judicial murder by secret courts. Both views are held by Ghanaians today; this page records what was done, not which side to take.
Limann's government inherited an economy in ruins and lasted two years. On 31 December 1981 Rawlings struck again. This time he did not hand power back. The Provisional National Defence Council ruled Ghana by decree for eleven years.
The early PNDC years were violent. People's Defence Committees, "people's courts" and Public Tribunals operated alongside — and often instead of — the regular courts. On 30 June 1982 three High Court judges and a retired army officer were abducted and murdered in Accra — a crime still at the heart of the debate about those years.
The full story: Martyrs of the Rule of Law — the three murdered judges. Rawlings himself: Jerry John Rawlings.
The PNDC faced several plots. The most serious came in June 1983.
On 19 June 1983 a group of soldiers and dissidents, including men who had crossed back into Ghana from exile, attacked in Accra, freed prisoners and briefly took control of the broadcasting station before being defeated.
The men captured were tried not in the ordinary courts but before the PNDC's Public Tribunals. Several were sentenced to death and executed; others were sentenced in their absence. The same regime that had executed eight senior officers in 1979 now executed those who tried to overthrow it.
1983 was also the year of drought, bushfires, hunger — and the expulsion of more than a million Ghanaians from Nigeria. It is remembered as the lowest point of the Rawlings years, and the year he turned to the IMF and World Bank for an economic recovery programme that would change the country.
Numbers differ. Accounts of how many were executed after the June 1983 attempt, and when, are not consistent. This page gives the facts that are not in dispute; corrections with sources are welcome.
Under domestic and international pressure, the PNDC allowed a new constitution, approved by referendum in April 1992. Rawlings stood as a civilian and won the elections of 1992 and 1996. On 7 January 1993 the Fourth Republic began.
In 2000 Rawlings' party lost, and power passed peacefully to John Agyekum Kufuor. Since then Ghana has changed government at the ballot box several times — to John Evans Atta Mills, John Dramani Mahama and Nana Akufo-Addo — and has had no successful coup since 1981.
Where it happened: Flagstaff House, Broadcasting House, Osu Castle (seat of government until 2013) and Black Star Square. Presidential audio and video: Atta Mills archive.
Ghana today is held up as one of Africa's steadier democracies, and it has earned that. But it was not always so. Between 1966 and 1983 soldiers took power four times, executed former heads of state, and answered opposition with firing squads — on every side. The Fourth Republic was built by people who remembered all of it. Visitors who only see the peace of today should know what it cost.
Verified: 26 September 2026. Dates of the coups of 24 February 1966, 13 January 1972, 5 July 1978, 4 June 1979 and 31 December 1981; the failed countercoup of 17 April 1967 and the execution of Lt Arthur and Lt Yeboah; the executions of 16 and 26 June 1979; the handover of 24 September 1979; the attempt of 19 June 1983; and the start of the Fourth Republic on 7 January 1993 follow standard historical accounts. The number of executions after 1983 is disputed and is not stated. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.