The African Studies Review would like to issue a clarification regarding this article (Skinner Reference Skinner2020). The events in Togo on 13 January 1963 were the first coup during the period in which the majority of West African states had become independent from European colonial rule. Other examples of events in which political leaders were deposed or overthrown can of course be identified in earlier periods of West African history, and scholars have also described these events as coups.