Page 326 - They Also Served

Acheampong remained head of state until 1978, when he was, in turn, overthrown in a palace coup by his deputy, Lieutenant-General Fred Akuffo. However, Akuffo did not rule for long. In May 1979, Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings and six other junior officers were arrested for planning a coup. At his subsequent court martial, Rawlings was sentenced to death but was sprung from prison and led yet another coup which overthrew Akuffo. As one of his first acts in power, Rawlings ordered a ‘house cleaning exercise’. Former heads of state, Acheampong, Akuffo and Afrifa were all rounded up. After badly organised and almost certainly illegal show trials, they were executed by firing squad and the bodies were hastily buried.
In 2001, as part of national reconciliation, Rawlings’ successor, the democratically elected president John Kufuor, returned the bodies of those executed to their families. On 28th January 2002, the remains of Brigadier Akwasi Afrifa, former head of state of Ghana, were finally laid to rest in his hometown.
320