Thomas Gankama-Quiwonkpa (27 July 1940 – 17 November 1985) was a Liberian military officer who was a Commanding General of the Armed Forces of Liberia (AFL).
Quiwonkpa joined the AFL as a teenager and came to prominence during the 1980 Liberian coup d'état, in which he assisted Samuel Doe in overthrowing President William Tolbert and ending 133 years of Americo-Liberian rule.
After finishing high school in 1958 through a programme at the Barclay Training Center, he received an assignment to the AFL's records department.
On 12 November 1985, one month after elections were held, Quiwonkpa, supported by about two dozen heavily armed men, covertly entered Liberia through Sierra Leone, and launched a coup against Doe.
[6] In a campaign of retribution against the coup plotters and their supporters, Doe's government launched a bloody purge against the Gio and Mano ethnic groups in Quiwonkpa's Nimba County, raising alarm about a possible genocide.