ABSTRACT
The Gold Coast was the first British colony in tropical Africa to have an elected unofficial majority in its legislature. From the end of the Second World War she was the pace-setter of constitutional development in West Africa. Although Nigeria was larger and had much greater overall economic resources than the Gold Coast, she was held up to a greater extent by tribalism in her movement towards independence. When Sir Alan Burns arrived in the Gold Coast from Nigeria in 1942 to become Governor, conditions were thus already ripe, if not overripe, for the introduction of a great measure of representative government, and he prepared a five-year plan with this intention. Less than two years after the introduction of the Burns Constitution, rioting broke out in Accra and spread up country.
