After losing the presidential contest against Dr Kwame Nkrumah in April 1960, Dr John Boakye Danquah was arrested in 1961 over allegations he plans to topple the Convention People’s Party (CPP) government.

He was arrested under the Preventive Detention Act on October 3, 1961,  but he was later released on June 22, 1962.

Two years later, Danquah was arrested again for being implicated in the Ametewee assassination attempt against President Nkrumah.

He was arrested on January 8, 1964, and detained at the Condemned Section (Special Block) in cell number 9.

Aside from a chamber pot, the prison cell had no bed nor furniture for his use.

The cell measures approximately 9 by 6 feet which had only a small solid door and a few barred windows high up in the rear wall for ventilation.

After a year in jail, JB Danquah gave up the ghost after a reported heart attack while in detention at the Nsawam Medium Prison on February 4, 1965.

  JB Danquah was found dead in his prison cell

A year after his death, the CPP government was overthrown by Lt. General Joseph A. Ankrah’s National Liberation Council on February 24, 1996.

After the subversion of the CPP government in February 1966 by the National Liberation Council (NLC), JB Danquah was given a state funeral and his status was rehabilitated.

Later, the Danquah Circle Roundabout, a key intersection in the arterial road network of Accra was named after him.

John Kwame Kyeretwie Boakye Danquah was born December 8, 1895, and was a Ghanaian statesman,  pan-Africanist, scholar, lawyer and historian.