On the 24th of February 1966, Nkrumah was overthrown through a National Liberation Council (NLC) coup d’état led by Lieutenant-General Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka.
Osagyefo on the day of the coup had left Ghana on peacemaking mission to Hanoi over the Vietnam War, when the military took over his government.
On this day, several Ghanaians who gathered at the area where his statue was captured, around the Old Parliament House in Accra and this was toppled over and smashed.
In the process, the head of Nkrumah’s statue was crashed and separated from the body.
This statue today stands at the refurbished Nkrumah Memorial Mausoleum in Accra in the state in which it was last seen.
The Statue has been repolished to look better but the head has been engraved in another stone, a few steps away from the body at the extended part of the mausoleum.
This was revealed by Eddy Kwao, Acting Director of the mausoleum who explained in an interview with citinews that both parts of the statue remain separated because they want to maintain history.
“This is one of Kwame Nkrumah’s statues that was made after independence.
Complete, and used to stand in front of the old parliament just across the street. But in the course of the coup d’etat against his government in 1966, things happened so the statue was vandalized to what we now see. They pushed it down and some the parts got vandalized.
It was just in 2009 that someone returned it and so for us to tell the history and to keep the facts still as it is, we kept it,” he said.
Background:
The headless statue which was damaged and toppled over after Nkrumah’s government was overthrown in 1966 stands on the right hand side a little away from the main statue of Nkrumah. It was made by the Italian sculptor, Nicola Cataudella and was mounted in front of the Old Parliament House in Accra on March 5, 1958.
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Source: www.ghanaweb.com
