By Corporate leader Yaw Nsarkoh has launched a stinging attack on what he describes as Ghana’s collapsing culture of facts and evidence, warning that the country cannot build a quality civilisation on a foundation of gossip, superstition, and reckless punditry.
Delivering the keynote address at the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) Quality Week Celebration at the University of Ghana, Legon, on Monday, February 23, 2026, Nsarkoh said Ghana’s media landscape — both social and traditional — had been overrun by people who show up to serious national debates “equipped with neither expertise nor preparation.”
“Hearsay, guesswork, rumours, gossip, myths, suppositions, speculation, unreasonable assumptions, half-truths, distortions and outright superstition — sometimes even near hallucinations — are passed on to unsuspecting audiences as reasonable conclusions by those who should know much better,” he said.
Prophets in the crosshairs
Nsarkoh was particularly blunt about Ghana’s culture of prophetic declarations, describing self-styled prophets who predict election results and the deaths of public figures as “the vilest offenders of all.”
“They are dangerous miscreants. Their menace must be stopped by any lawful means necessary, with firmness and resolve,” he declared, drawing what appeared to be a strong reaction from the audience.
He argued that much of the dysfunction in public discourse is driven by Ghana’s “out-of-control climate of political polarisation,” which he said had made malice a fuel for misinformation at the highest levels of society.
A call to scientists
Nsarkoh challenged NMIMR’s researchers and scientists to step into the gap — not just by doing good science, but by actively advocating for a fact-based culture in Ghana’s public life.
He urged the institute to pursue aggressive media partnerships and communication strategies to bring scientific knowledge to ordinary Ghanaians, noting that most people have no idea of the role NMIMR played in saving Ghana during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ebola scare.
“Without you, the story of COVID in Ghana would have been akin to carnage,” he said. “But who knows or even cares that you do all this?”
Quoting Frantz Fanon, the medical researcher and philosopher, Nsarkoh reminded his audience: “Everything can be explained to the people, on the single condition that you want them to understand.”
He called on the institute to be more deliberate about building public goodwill and literacy around science, describing it not as arrogance or showing off, but as a basic understanding of how the modern world works.
The event was chaired by Professor Alfred Yawson, Provost of the College of Health Sciences, and hosted by NMIMR Director Professor Dorothy Yeboah-Manu. The guest of Honour was Hon. Emmanuel Armah Kofi Buah, Minister for Lands and Natural Resources.
