VIDEO: When Queen Elizabeth II defied all odds to visit Ghana

Young Queen Elizabeth II took a daring trip to Ghana in 1961 four years after the West African country had gained independence from British colonial rule.

There were rising tensions in Ghana then under first President, Kwame Nkrumah who was practically leaning towards the Soviet Union amidst snippets of information that Ghana wanted to leave the Commonwealth.

Five days to the visit of the UK monarch, a bomb went off in Accra which destroyed a statue of then President Kwame Nkrumah whose autocratic tendencies were becoming glaring.

There were calls from the British Parliament, Prime Minister, and even the populace for the monarch not to embark on a perilous trip but she defied all odds and flew to Ghana on November 9th, 1961 in the company of with Prince Philip.

One reason she was reluctant to reschedule was that he had previously canceled in 1959 when she was pregnant with Prince Andrew.

On October 19, Winston Churchill expressed these sentiments when he wrote to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, saying in part: "I have the impression that there is widespread uneasiness both over the physical safety of the queen and, perhaps more, because her visit would seem to endorse a regime which has imprisoned hundreds of Opposition members without trial and which is thoroughly authoritarian in tendency."

The Preventive Detention Act, which was passed in 1958, gave power to the prime minister to detain certain persons for up to five years without trial making Nkrumah a despot.

Amended in 1959 and again in 1962, the act was seen by opponents of the CPP government as a flagrant restriction of individual freedom and human rights.

Once it had been granted these legal powers, the CPP administration managed to silence its opponents. Dr. J.B. Danquah, a leading member of the UGCC, was detained until he died in prison in 1965.

Dr. Kofi Abrefa Busia, leader of the opposition United Party (UP), formed by the NLM and other parties in response to Nkrumah's outlawing of so-called separatist parties in 1957, went into exile in London to escape detention, while other members still in the country joined the ruling party.

On July 1, 1960, Ghana became a republic, and Nkrumah won the presidential election that year. Shortly thereafter, Nkrumah was proclaimed president for life, and the CPP became the sole party of the state.

Using the powers granted him by the party and the constitution, Nkrumah by 1961 had detained an estimated 400 to 2,000 of his opponents. Nkrumah's critics pointed to the rigid hold of the CPP over the nation's political system and to numerous cases of human rights abuses. Others, however, defended Nkrumah's agenda and policies.

VIDEO OF QUEEN ELIZABETH'S VISIT TO GHANA: