Nkrumah Asks Togo's Olympio To Return Attempted Assassins, 1959
Kwame Nkrumah was the Ghanaian nationalist leader who led the Gold Coast's drive for Independence from Britain and presided over its emergence as the new nation of Ghana. He headed the country from Independence in 1957 until he was overthrown by a coup in 1966. In 1959 there was an attempt to assassinate Nkrumah led by a Ghanaian citizen living in Lome, the capital of Togo. Nkrumah sent this letter to the President of Togo, Sylvanus Olympio, on June 5, 1959, asking that Togo return the accused, John Kojo Mensah Anthony, back to Ghana to be tried for treason. Written on his official Prime Minister letter-head, signed, "Kwame Nkrumah." Olympio's positive response to the request is shown below. Ironically, it was Sylvanus Olympio who would be assassinated in a military coup in 1963 - the first coup d etat in the French and British colonies in Africa that achieved Independence in the 1950s and 1960s.
