Kwame Nkrumah
Detention made him a national figure. A year later he broke with the UGCC and founded the CPP.
Ghana-Net.com · History · Accra · 28 February 1948
They had fought for Britain in Burma. They came home to no jobs, unpaid promises and rising prices. On 28 February 1948 they marched to the Governor's castle with a petition — and a British police officer opened fire. Three men died at the crossroads. Accra burned for days. Nine years later, the Gold Coast was Ghana.
During the Second World War tens of thousands of men from the Gold Coast served in the British forces, many with the Gold Coast Regiment in East Africa and in the Burma campaign against Japan. They had seen that British soldiers could be beaten, that colonial rule was not a law of nature, and that they had been promised something in return for their service.
What they came home to was different: unemployment, small or late gratuities and pensions, and prices driven up by wartime shortages and by the grip of a few European trading firms on imported goods. The ex-servicemen organised, and they drew up a petition to the Governor, Sir Gerald Creasy, setting out their grievances.
Not rioters. The men who marched on 28 February were veterans in an organised, unarmed procession with a petition. What happened to them is the reason the day is remembered.
The march did not happen in a vacuum. Accra was already in revolt over prices.
From January 1948 a Ga chief and businessman, Nii Kwabena Bonne III, led a boycott of European imported goods across the colony, in protest at the prices charged by the big trading companies. It was remarkably effective. An agreement to cut prices was due to take effect on — of all days — 28 February 1948, and the boycott was called off.
When shoppers found that the promised reductions were not what they had expected, anger was already running high on the same day the ex-servicemen set out to march.
The veterans' procession set off through Accra towards Christiansborg Castle at Osu, the seat of the colonial government, intending to hand their petition to the Governor in person. The authorities had not approved the route to the castle.
At the Christiansborg crossroads, a short distance from the castle, the marchers were stopped by a police detachment under a British officer, Superintendent Colin Imray. The march did not turn back. The police opened fire, and Imray himself is recorded as having fired.
Three ex-servicemen were killed:
Men who survived Burma were shot dead at home, by the government they had fought for, while carrying a petition. That single fact did more to end colonial legitimacy in the Gold Coast than any speech.
News of the shooting reached central Accra, where crowds were already angry over prices.
Riots broke out. Shops of European trading firms and of Syrian and Lebanese traders were looted and set on fire. The unrest spread in the following days to other towns, including Kumasi and Koforidua. By the time order was restored, some 29 people had been killed and more than 200 injured, according to the official figures.
The riots were not only about three dead soldiers. They were about prices, about unemployment, and about a colonial economy run for a handful of foreign firms. The shooting was the spark; the fuel had been gathering for years.
The colonial government looked for someone to blame and found the leaders of the new United Gold Coast Convention. In March 1948 six of them were arrested and sent to detention in the north:
Detention made him a national figure. A year later he broke with the UGCC and founded the CPP.
The UGCC's leading figure and the man who proposed the name "Ghana".
Later Chief Justice, and President of the Second Republic from 1970 to 1972.
The full story of the six: The Big Six — Ghana's Founding Fathers.
London sent a commission to find out what had gone wrong. Its answer changed the timetable of African independence.
The Watson Commission reported later in 1948 that the colony's constitution was out of date and that Africans had to be given a real share of government. That led to the Coussey Committee of 1949, an all-African committee that drafted a new constitution, and to the Gold Coast's first general election in 1951.
Nkrumah, who had left the UGCC to found the Convention People's Party, won that election from a prison cell after his "Positive Action" campaign of 1950. He was released to become Leader of Government Business. On 6 March 1957 the Gold Coast became Ghana, the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to win its independence.
The longer story: The Road to Independence, 1945–1957 and British Colonial Administration, 1901–1957. Where independence was declared: Old Parliament House and Black Star Square.
In Osu, Accra, close to Osu Castle. The road that leads there is named 28th February Road after the day of the shooting.
A memorial to the ex-servicemen stands at the crossroads. It is a busy junction, not a park — stop where it is safe and look before you cross.
Osu Castle, Richters Fort, Osu Military Cemetery and Black Star Square — all within a short distance.
28 February is marked each year by veterans and officials at the memorial. Outside that day, most people drive past without knowing what happened here.
More on the capital: Accra. The forts and castle of the area: The Five Forts of Accra.
Accounts agree that police under Superintendent Colin Imray fired and that Imray fired himself. How many shots, and in what order, differ between sources.
The official figure is around 29 dead and over 200 injured across the colony. Some Ghanaian accounts give higher numbers. The three at the crossroads are not in doubt.
The colonial government blamed them. The evidence points to spontaneous anger over the shooting and prices. The arrests did more for the nationalist cause than anything the six had planned.
Independence in Ghana is usually told as Nkrumah's story, and in large part it is. But it did not begin with a speech. It began with three soldiers who had fought for the Empire, shot dead at a road junction in Osu for carrying a petition. Stand at the Christiansborg crossroads and you are standing where the end of the Gold Coast started.
Verified: 26 September 2026. The date of 28 February 1948, the ex-servicemen's petition to Governor Sir Gerald Creasy, the shooting at the Christiansborg crossroads by police under Superintendent Colin Imray, the deaths of Sergeant Adjetey, Corporal Attipoe and Private Odartey Lamptey, the Nii Kwabena Bonne boycott, the arrest of the Big Six, the Watson Commission and Coussey Committee follow standard historical accounts. Riot casualty figures are given as officially reported. Corrections welcome and will be published in full.