Editorial: Renaming Kotoka: When A Nation Chooses Amnesia Over Truth

The announcement by the Majority Leader, Mahama Ayariga, that the Jubilee House intends to rename Kotoka International Airport to Accra International Airport is not a routine administrative decision. It is a profound political statement that exposes how casually this nation is prepared to tamper with its own history.

Ghana is not merely debating the name of an airport. We are debating whether history should be judged through honest context or partisan nostalgia.

Lt. Gen. Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka was not a footnote in Ghana’s story. Born at Alakple in the Keta District of the Volta Region, Kotoka was a decorated military officer long before 1966. His bravery in the Congo earned him the Ghana Service Order for Exceptional Bravery in 1963, bestowed by the very state that now appears eager to diminish his legacy.

The current agitation to strip his name from the airport stems largely from an emotional and revisionist push to sanctify Kwame Nkrumah, while demonising those who removed him from power. That approach is intellectually lazy and historically dishonest.

Yes, Kwame Nkrumah was Ghana’s first president. But history does not confer sainthood. By the mid-1960s Ghana was in deep economic distress – crippling debt, runaway inflation, shortages of essential goods and widespread corruption driven by reckless state expansion and mismanaged industrialisation.

Politically, Ghana had ceased to be a democracy. The 1964 declaration of a one-party state, the Preventive Detention Act and the incarceration and death of opponents like J.B. Danquah marked the descent into authoritarian rule. Nkrumah had become what many Ghanaians feared most: a tin god.

Within the military, resentment simmered. Senior officers were humiliated, forced into retirement, while the president built a personal guard loyal not to the state but to himself. Ghana was on a collision course with instability.

It was under these conditions that the February 24, 1966 intervention occurred. The coup –Operation Cold Chop – led by Emmanuel Kotoka, Akwasi Afrifa, J.W.K. Harlley and J.A. Ankrah, removed Nkrumah while he was on a state visit to Hanoi. Kotoka himself announced the overthrow from the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation.

What is often deliberately omitted in today’s debate is the circumstance under which Accra International Airport was named after Kotoka. On April 17, 1967 Kotoka was murdered at the Accra Airport during an abortive counter-coup by junior officers loyal to the deposed regime. He was then serving as Chief of the Defence Staff. The airport became the site of his assassination, a defining moment in Ghana’s turbulent post-independence history.

Let us be clear: The Chronicle does not glorify coups. But neither do we accept the dangerous lie that the 1966 intervention was an unprovoked act of villainy. It was a reaction – right or wrong – to a system that had collapsed under its own excesses.

President John Mahama is a student of history. That makes this proposed renaming baffling. History is not a wardrobe to be rearranged depending on who occupies Jubilee House. It is a record of triumphs and failures, courage and mistakes, all of which must be confronted honestly.

Removing Kotoka’s name does not strengthen Ghana’s democracy. It weakens it. It teaches future generations that political power can rewrite memory, that today’s hero can become tomorrow’s embarrassment if the politics change.

Former President J.A. Kufuor once argued that Kotoka was regarded as a hero in his time. This was when pressure was brought to bear on his government to remove Kotoka’s name. That truth still stands.

If Ghana cannot fully honour the men who shaped its difficult path, the least it can do is not disgrace them after death. Whether we like it or not, we are beneficiaries of the choices – good and bad – made by these actors in history.

The Chronicle believes renaming Kotoka International Airport will not heal Ghana. It will deepen division, encourage historical dishonesty and signal that national monuments are no longer sacred, only political.

A nation that erases its heroes is a nation unsure of itself and a nation unsure of itself has no business lecturing its citizens about patriotism. Let history stand. Let truth prevail. And let Ghana stop fighting ghosts while ignoring the lessons they left behind.

 

 

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