Speaking during Ghana's 68th Independence Day celebration, Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama stated that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was responsible for the removal of Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah.
Mahama stated that declassified US documents confirm the CIA orchestrated the coup that ousted Nkrumah while he was abroad. He declared that the historical record is "loud and clear."
The president also argued that Nkrumah's ouster caused years of instability in the country and ended his vision for Ghana.
In February 1966, while Ghana's first president, Kwame Nkrumah, was visiting North Vietnam and China, his government was overthrown in a coup led by the military and the police service, with the support of the civil service. John Stockwell, former Chief of the Angola Task Force of the CIA, wrote that CIA agents in Accra had "intimate contact with the plotters."