E.K. Kotoka and Kwame Nkrumah
Discussions of the popularity or otherwise of the first-ever coup d’état in the history of the country have been brought to the fore again following a petition at the Supreme Court by the Democracy Hub, a civil society organization, and some elements within the Convention People’s Party (CPP), praying the apex court for the removal of the name of the mastermind of that coup, Lieutenant-General Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, from Ghana’s main airport.
The two organizations, in their joint suit, argued that honouring Lieutenant-General Kotoka, a key figure in the 1966 coup d’état that overthrew Ghana’s first president, contradicts Ghana’s democratic values.
While their move seems to enjoy some overwhelming backing among Ghanaians, owing to the benefit of hindsight and the seemingly ineffective leadership the country has suffered since the coup, it thus appears that their actions would have been extremely unpopular back in 1966 when the Kwame Nkrumah government was toppled.
History tells the story of how E.K. Kotoka and his assigns were celebrated as national heroes who overthrew the dictator Kwame Nkrumah.
The popularity of the 1966 coup and E.K. Kotoka at the time can be deduced from the passing of a decree in honour of Kotoka.
Documents and publications cited by Ghanaweb reveal that in 1969, the General Kotoka Trust Decree, which became an Act in 1971, was passed with the sole objective of honouring E.K. Kotoka.
Among the objectives of the Act was “the renaming of the Accra International Airport— ‘Kotoka International Airport’ after the late Lt.-Gen. Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, without any financial charge being placed on the trust fund;
“the acquisition by the trustees in favor of the trust of that portion of land situated at the Accra International Airport where it is proposed to erect a statue of the late General Kotoka, and to create a quiet garden to surround it.”
That is how Ghana’s main airport was named after a man who was once hailed as a liberator of the country from Kwame Nkrumah, but is now condemned as a puppet of supposed imperialist countries who wanted Nkrumah gone.
The General Kotoka Trust Decree was established in honour of Kotoka, who died during a failed coup by the Operation Guitar Boys led by Lt. Samuel Arthur and Lt. Moses Yeboah.
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