The Kulungugu bomb attack was a failed assassination attempt on Kwame Nkrumah, the President of Ghana.
On 1 August 1962, Kwame Nkrumah stopped in Kulungugu, a minor port of entry in the Pusiga District in Upper East Bawku. [1] [2] [3] There was a bomb explosion aimed at killing the President.
Nkrumah was coming from a meeting with President Maurice Yaméogo in Tenkodogo, Burkina Faso, at the time known as Upper Volta. The meeting was to sign documents relating to the construction of the major hydroelectric project on the Volta which would become Lake Volta. [4] [5] [6]
During the trip back to Ghana, heavy rains caused difficulties for the convoy on the country's bad roads. The Presidential convoy stopped at an outskirts of Bawku to greet school children who had been waving and catching glimpses of the President. A school child, Elizabeth Asantewaa, [7] approached the president with a bouquet of flowers, was severely injured when the bomb exploded. [8] [9] The president was saved by his bodyguard, Captain Samuel Buckman, who instinctively wrestled the president to the ground after hearing the ticking of the timing device. The President and Buckman experience non life-threatening injuries, but 55 other people were injured. [5]
Nkrumah was treated by a British doctor at Bawku Hospital, who removed shrapnel from the President's back and side. [10]
A memorial stands at the site of the bombing.
Nkrumah accused Tawia Adamafio, the Minister of Information, Broadcasting and Presidential affairs, Ako Adjei, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and H.H. Cofie-Crabbe, Executive Secretary of the Convention People's Party, of being behind the assassination plot. They were jailed under the Preventive Detention Act. [11]
The three were cleared by a court headed by Chief Justice Arku Korsah in a trial which lasted for a year. Nkrumah had Korsah dismissed, and appointed a new court to recharge the men. Nkrumah handpicked the jury that found the three guilty and they were sentenced to death. Later, the death sentences were commuted to twenty year sentences. [12]
After Kwame Nkrumah was ousted from office in 1966, the three were released by the National Liberation Council (NLC).
Francis Kwame Nkrumah was a Ghanaian politician, political theorist, and revolutionary. He served as Prime Minister of the Gold Coast from 1952 until 1957, when it gained independence from Britain. He was then the first Prime Minister and then the President of Ghana, from 1957 until 1966. An influential advocate of Pan-Africanism, Nkrumah was a founding member of the Organization of African Unity and winner of the Lenin Peace Prize from the Soviet Union in 1962.
The national flag of Ghana consists of a horizontal triband of red, yellow, and green. It was designed in replacement of the British Gold Coast's Blue Ensign.
Edward Akufo-Addo was a Ghanaian politician and lawyer. He was a member of the "Big Six" leaders of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) and one of the founding fathers of Ghana who engaged in the fight for Ghana's independence. He became the Chief Justice (1966–70), and later ceremonial President (1970–72), of the Republic of Ghana. He was the father of the current (executive) President of Ghana, Nana Addo Akufo-Addo.
The Convention People's Party (CPP) is a socialist political party in Ghana based on the ideas of the first President of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah. The CPP was formed in June 1949 after Nkrumah broke away from the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC).
The United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) was first nationalist movement with the aim of self-government " in the shortest possible time" founded in August 1947 by educated Africans such as J.B. Danquah, A.G. Grant, R.A. Awoonor-Williams, Edward Akufo Addo, and others, the leadership of the organisation called for the replacement of Chiefs on the Legislative Council with educated persons. whose aim was to bring about Ghanaian independence from their British colonial masters after the Second World War. The United Gold Coast Convention appointed its leaders to include Kwame Nkrumah, who was the Secretary General. However, upon an allegation for plans against Nkrumah's leadership, he was arrested and jailed. The UGCC leadership broke up and Kwame Nkrumah went on a separate way to set up the Convention People's Party (CPP) for the purpose of self-governance. The UGCC was founded in Saltpond.
Ako Adjei, was a Ghanaian statesman, politician, lawyer and journalist. He was a member of the United Gold Coast Convention and one of six leaders who were detained during Ghana's struggle for political independence from Britain, a group famously called The Big Six. He has been recognized as a founding father of Ghana for his active participation in the immediate politics of Ghana's pre-independence era. Adjei became a member of parliament as a Convention People's Party candidate in 1954 and held ministerial offices until 1962 when as Minister for Foreign Affairs he was wrongfully detained for the Kulungugu bomb attack.
Frederick Kwasi Apaloo was a Ghanaian judge who served as Chief Justice of Kenya from 1993 to 1995 and Chief Justice of Ghana from 1977 to 1986. He is the only judge to have served on the Supreme Court of Ghana under three Ghanaian republics.
Sir Kobina Arku Korsah was the first Chief Justice of Ghana in 1956.
The Big Six were six leaders of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC), one of the leading political parties in the British colony of the Gold Coast, known after independence as Ghana. They were detained by the colonial authorities in 1948 following disturbances that led to the killing of three World War II veterans. They are pictured on the front of the Ghana cedi notes.
The Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (GAAS) is a learned society for the arts and sciences based in Accra, Ghana. The institution was founded in November 1959 by Kwame Nkrumah with the aim to promote the pursuit, advancement and dissemination of knowledge in all branches of the sciences and the humanities.
George Alfred Grant, popularly known as Paa Grant, was a merchant and politician in the Gold Coast who has been called "the father of Gold Coast politics". As a political activist, he was a founder and the first president of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) in August 1947. He was also one of Ghana's Founding Fathers. He paid for Kwame Nkrumah to return to Ghana from the United States.
Tawia Adamafio was a Ghanaian minister in the Nkrumah government during the first republic of Ghana.
Founders' Day is a national public holiday observed to commemorate the contributions of all the people, notably the "Big Six" who led the struggle for Ghana's independence. The Founder's Day was formerly called "Founder's Day" with the letter "S" appearing after an apostrophe and it was celebrated to earmark the achievements of Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.
Kulungugu is a small town in the Upper East Region of Ghana and a minor entry point at the border of Burkina Faso and the Pusiga District of Ghana.
Joseph Yaw Manu was a Ghanaian civil servant and politician of the First Parliament of the Second Republic representing the Mampong South Constituency in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. He was a deputy minister for transport during the second republic.
Hans Kofi Boni is a Ghanaian politician during the first republic of Ghana. He was the Member of parliament (MP) for Ho West.
Hugh Horatio Cofie-Crabbe was a Ghanaian politician who is notable as being detained with two cabinet ministers for the Kulungugu bomb attempt on the life of Ghana's political leader Kwame Nkrumah in 1962. At the time of being detained, he was the executive secretary of Nkrumah's Convention People's Party and a widely known party functionary.
John Ackah Blay-Miezah was a Ghanaian con artist. A pioneer of advance-fee fraud, he masterminded the "Oman Ghana Trust Fund", which he claimed had been endowed by President Kwame Nkrumah and to which he had been appointed trustee. According to Blay-Miezah, the Trust Fund measured, variously, in the hundreds of millions to hundreds of billions of dollars, but required significant financial resources to release from the Swiss banks in which it had been deposited, which he solicited from "investors", to which he promised a ten-fold return. Active from the 1960s to 1980s, he is said to have swindled over $200m from victims in North America, Europe, and Asia. An intensely controversial figure in his lifetime, Blay-Miezah's supporters included Ako Adjei, several of Nkrumah's cabinet ministers, and former U.S. Attorney General John N. Mitchell.