ABSTRACT
In 1966 the Ghana army consisted of some 600 officers and 14,000 other ranks. It was then the largest in West Africa and the cost of maintaining it the fifth highest in the continent. It had been expanded rapidly since 1960 when it had 7,000 men and (at officer level) it was entirely Africanised. Similarly, the police force, which at independence had numbered about 6,000 men, had grown to 14,000 some ten years later. 1 The army was officered primarily by men from the coastal areas; the other ranks, despite efforts to broaden the pattern of recruitment, were still predominantly from the north. Such was the composition of the armed forces which brought down the party regime on 24 February 1966. It was shortly before dawn that day when Col. Kotoka, Commander of the Second Infantry Brigade Group,
declared in a radio broadcast: Fellow Citizens of Ghana, I have come to inform you that the Military, in cooperation with the Ghana police, have taken over the government of Ghana today. The myth surrounding Nkrumah has been broken. Parliament is dissolved and Kwame Nkrumah is dismissed from office. All ministers are also dismissed. The Convention People's Party is disbanded with effect from now.
Compared with the forces of other African countries, neither the army nor the police had been badly paid or poorly equipped, and although there were complaints (after the coup) that the army had been starved of resources, it is difficult to believe that this was the main motive for intervention. The conspirators seemed primarily to have been moved by a combination of fear and resentment. They feared that the President's Own Guard Regiment, built up by Nkrumah with Russian help, might displace regular units of the army in presidential favour; they resented Nkrumah's sporadic interference with the army's internal affairs, including not only promotions and retirements but the party's meddling (as the army officers saw it) in the very difficult Congo operation. And both emotions were strengthened by the belief that Nkrumah was dragging the country towards economic collapse under a single party dictatorship. The coup almost failed through poor coordination, nor was it wholly bloodless—those killed included Maj. Gen. Charles Barwah, Chief of the General Staff, in addition to those of the President's Own Guard Regiment who remained loyal to Nkrumah—but it was quickly brought to a conclusion, and a distinct pattern of military-police rule began almost immediately to take shape.