Mr. Kwesi Armah, Ghana’s High Commissioner to the UK, said in London on Oct. 22, on returning from a week's visit to Accra, that the suggestion by some M.P.s that the Queen's visit would be unwise was “just an imaginary conspiracy on their part.” There was “a fever of enthusiasm everywhere” in Ghana for the Queen's visit, and “no question” of President Nkrumah using the royal visit for political advantage. Fresh concern, however, was aroused in Britain following two bomb explosions in Accra on Nov. 4, the first of which blasted away the feet of the life-size statue of President Nkrumah outside Parliament House, and the second slightly damaged a storeroom at the foot of the large “Freedom and Justice” archway in Black Star Square, where the Queen was to take the salute at a military parade in her honor; a night watchman was injured in the latter explosion. These events occurred immediately prior to the British Commonwealth Secretary, Lord Duncan Sandy’s familiarization tour of Ghana ahead of a proposed Royal visit by Queen Elizabeth II, later that month.
November 4, 1961: Accra rocked by two bomb explosions