Captain Samuel Buckman, unsung hero ADC, who shielded the President with his body

It is a known story that on August 1, 1962, Ghana nearly lost its first President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, in one of the series of assassination attempts in the country’s political history. 

President Nkrumah’s convoy had stopped in Kulungungu, then a village near Bawku in the Upper East Region of the Republic of Ghana, on his way back from then Upper Volta, now Burkina Faso, where he met his then Voltaïque counterpart, President Maurice Yameogo, at the Upper Volta (Burkina Faso) border town of Tenkudugu.

The visit was to discuss plans and modalities for the elimination of customs barriers between the two countries as a step towards furthering Nkrumah’s larger Pan-African unity scheme.

The return road trip that fateful day was characterised by an unusually heavy downpour that disrupted the presidential convoy's order. 

There was pressure on the convoy to stop at Kulungungu to acknowledge the schoolchildren and village folk who had been waiting to catch a glimpse of their beloved President and to exchange pleasantries with him.

The convey thus stopped and as the President came out from his car and moved forward to greet the enthusiastic crowd, among whom was a school child approaching him with a bouquet, a grenade was thrown from within the crowd in his direction, intending to assassinate him.

Following closely behind the President as Aide-de-Camp (ADC) was Captain Samuel Buckman, who, upon hearing the ticking of the explosive device that had been thrown at the President, instinctively wrestled the President to the ground, lay on top of him, and used himself as a shield to reduce the impact of the grenade, which was expected to explode.

The grenade exploded within seconds, killing the school child bearing the bouquet of flowers and severely injuring close to 50 onlookers. 

Both President Nkrumah and his ADC survived the explosion but sustained injuries.

They were treated by a British doctor at the Bawku Hospital.    

Historical accounts indicate that Captain Samuel Buckman spent the rest of his life with the injuries he sustained from the exploded grenade, with shrapnel embedded in his body.

His courage changed the course of Ghana’s history.

His selfless action and sacrifice saved the life of a sitting President at a critical moment in the young nation of Ghana’s history.

Yet today, he remains one of Ghana’s unsung heroes. 

The writer is a lawyer/historian.