Every traveller who lands in Accra arrives at an airport named after a man who was killed on its forecourt.
Lieutenant General Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka was shot and stabbed near the airport on 17 April 1967, during a failed coup attempt code-named Operation Guitar Boy. In 1969, Accra International Airport was renamed Kotoka International Airport in his honour. A statue of him stands near the spot where he died.
Who Kotoka was
Kotoka, born in 1926 in the Volta Region, was an army officer who played a leading role in the coup of 24 February 1966 that overthrew Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first president. After the coup he became a member of the National Liberation Council, the military government that ruled Ghana until 1969.
Operation Guitar Boy
On 17 April 1967, a group of junior officers led by Lieutenant Samuel Arthur, with Lieutenant Moses Yeboah, attempted to seize power. Kotoka was caught near the airport and killed after fighting there. The coup attempt failed within hours. Arthur and Yeboah were later tried and executed by firing squad.
Kotoka was one of the most prominent casualties of Ghana’s early coups, and the NLC government turned him into a national hero. Renaming the country’s main airport after him was the biggest part of that.
The argument over the name
For many Ghanaians, especially supporters of Nkrumah’s legacy, the name is hard to accept. The airport was developed during Nkrumah’s era, and it now carries the name of one of the men who overthrew him. Calls to rename it have come up repeatedly over the decades, with some suggesting it should carry Nkrumah’s name or a neutral one.
Supporters of the current name say Kotoka died in service, that history should not be rewritten by each generation, and that renaming a major international airport is expensive and confusing. The debate returns whenever the airport is expanded or in the news.
The airport today
Kotoka International Airport is Ghana’s main gateway. Terminal 3, which opened in 2018, handles most international flights and was built to handle millions of passengers a year. The airport code, ACC, has not changed since the renaming.
The 1966 coup
The coup Kotoka helped lead took place while Nkrumah was abroad on a trip to Hanoi, travelling via Beijing. Soldiers and police seized key points in Accra on the morning of 24 February 1966, and fighting at Flagstaff House, the presidential residence, left people dead. The National Liberation Council, headed by Lieutenant General Joseph Ankrah, ruled Ghana until handing power to Kofi Busia’s elected government in 1969, the same year the airport took Kotoka’s name.
Passengers walking out of Terminal 3 rarely know the story. The statue near the old terminal marks where the man whose name is on their boarding pass died, fifty-nine years ago.
