Government reveals reason to rename Kotoka International Airport

GOVERNMENT MOVES TO RENAME KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT

The government has initiated a process to rename the country’s primary aviation hub, Kotoka International Airport (KIA), back to its original designation: Accra International Airport.

The proposal, to be presented to Parliament by the Minister for Transport, seeks to correct what the government describes as a historical oversight by recognizing the original landowners.

Majority Leader Mahama Ayariga disclosed the plan during a parliamentary leadership media briefing on Tuesday. He explained that the move is intended to honour the people of Accra who ceded their land for the airport’s construction in the 1950s.

“It is not fair to the people of Accra. They gave their land for the airport, it was named after their city, and then it was changed to another name, even though the land did not come from there,” Mr. Ayariga stated.

The facility opened in 1958 as the Accra International Airport. Its name was changed in 1969 to honour Lieutenant General Emmanuel Kwasi Kotoka, a member of the National Liberation Council who was killed on the airport grounds during a failed coup attempt in 1967.

Mr. Ayariga stressed that the proposed change is not an attempt to erase General Kotoka’s legacy. “This has nothing to do with his personality… The point is that when you remove a name that reflected where the land came from and replace it with another, it creates a cycle where names can be changed again in the future,” he clarified.

He framed the bill as an effort to “address a historical wrong” and restore recognition to the communities that made the airport’s development possible.

The Minister for Transport is expected to lay the bill before the House during the current eight-week parliamentary session. If passed, it will mark the first name change for the airport in over five decades.

Kotoka International Airport remains Ghana’s sole international airport, handling a record 3.1 million passengers in 2023. The debate over its name has persisted for years, with some commentators arguing that a key national infrastructure project from the era of Ghana’s first President, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, should not bear the name of a figure associated with the 1966 coup that overthrew him.