The $1.7 Billion GoldBod Debate: When Politics Speaks Louder Than Evidence

For the past few days, I have watched television programmes, listened to radio discussions and followed conversations on social media about the reported US$1.7 billion associated with Ghana's Domestic Gold Purchase Programme.

I have listened to politicians, economists, commentators, academics and other influential voices debate the matter.

Yet, the more I listened, the more concerned I became about something beyond the actual GoldBod controversy.

I began asking myself: Are we genuinely trying to understand what happened, or are we simply looking for arguments to defend the political side we already support?

Let me make my position clear from the beginning.

I am not writing this article to conclude that GoldBod did or did not lose US$1.7 billion. I am not an auditor of the programme, nor do I claim to have independently examined every document and technical calculation surrounding the figure.

In fact, the very fact that there are competing interpretations of what the figure represents should make all of us more cautious.

My concern is how quickly we are reaching conclusions before properly understanding the evidence.

We seem to have chosen our conclusions first
When a matter involving billions of dollars becomes a national issue, I expect people who command influence and respect to do something very simple before speaking: investigate.

Read the document.
Understand the figures.
Examine the methodology.
Find out what the numbers actually represent.

Then speak.
But what I have observed across several platforms has left me deeply concerned.

Instead of beginning with the evidence, many discussions appear to begin with political allegiance.

If the allegation is damaging to the government, some people immediately embrace it.

If the allegation is damaging to the opposition's previous government, others immediately reject it.

The same figure can therefore become two completely different things depending on who is discussing it.

And this is where politics becomes more powerful than evidence.

The question should not first be:
“Which political party is responsible?”

It should be:
“What exactly happened?”
Then we can determine responsibility from the evidence.

Education should produce independent thinking

What concerns me even more is that some of the people participating in these discussions are highly educated and command considerable respect.

These are people we expect to help society understand difficult national issues.

Education, however, should mean more than the ability to speak confidently.

It should mean the ability to examine evidence independently.

It should mean being willing to say, “I don't know yet.”

It should mean being able to say, “Let me read the report before I reach a conclusion.”

And perhaps most importantly, it should mean being willing to change one's position when the evidence proves one's earlier position wrong.

Unfortunately, political affiliation can sometimes overpower that intellectual responsibility.

A person may have the education, experience and intellectual capacity to examine an issue but still choose to reproduce the position of a political leader without sufficiently interrogating it.

That should concern all of us.
The media also has a responsibility
This brings me to our media houses.
I have watched programmes where people are invited to discuss highly technical national issues, yet the conversation sometimes gives the impression that the objective is simply to have opposing political voices fight over the issue.

But balance is not necessarily achieved by putting two political parties on opposite sides of a table.

If the subject is technical, the public deserves people who understand the technical aspects of the subject.

If an important figure is quoted from a report, the presenter should be able to ask:

Where exactly does the report say that?
What does that figure actually mean?
How was it calculated?
What institution recorded it?
Is this a realised loss, a valuation movement, a policy cost, or something else?

What are the assumptions behind the calculation?

These are not partisan questions.
They are basic questions of responsible journalism.

A media house has every right to give political actors a platform. But when a person is invited to explain an issue to millions of people, there should also be a responsibility to ensure that claims are challenged, clarified and properly contextualised.

Otherwise, the platform can become a vehicle for spreading confusion rather than understanding.

The microphone reaches places the studio cannot see

This is perhaps the part that worries me most.

The discussion does not end in Accra.
The people sitting in television studios and radio stations may have access to reports, analysts, economists, lawyers, researchers and the internet.

But the information they produce travels far beyond the studio.

It reaches rural communities.
It reaches farmers.
It reaches petty traders.
It reaches young people.
It reaches elderly people who may have no practical way of accessing the original documents being discussed.

It reaches people who may not even understand the technical language contained in an IMF report, an audited financial statement or a central-bank document.

For many of these people, the person speaking on the radio becomes their source of information.

The explanation becomes the evidence.
That is where the responsibility becomes enormous.

I recently heard people around me discussing the GoldBod matter with great confidence. Their understanding of the issue appeared to have come largely from the political narrative they had heard.

I did not blame them.
How could I?
They were not sitting with the original documents. They were not participating in the technical analysis. They were listening to people they believed knew better.

And this is precisely why those who command public platforms must be careful.

What happens when a political statement becomes public knowledge?

A political leader makes a statement.
A television station discusses it.
A radio station repeats it.
A commentator adds his interpretation.
Someone cuts a thirty-second clip and posts it on social media.

WhatsApp groups pick it up.
People discuss it at the market, at the roadside, at home and in the village.

Before long, a political claim has become what people understand as an established fact.

The original document may never be seen.
The qualification may disappear.
The uncertainty may disappear.
The competing interpretation may disappear.
What remains is the simple statement people can remember.

And once misinformation or even an incomplete interpretation becomes embedded in public consciousness, correcting it becomes extremely difficult.

This is why public communication is not a small responsibility.

We must stop confusing confidence with knowledge

One of the biggest problems in our public discourse is that we sometimes mistake confidence for competence.

Someone who speaks forcefully is assumed to understand the subject.

Someone who has a political position is treated as an authority on everything related to that political position.

Someone who appears regularly on television becomes familiar, and familiarity is mistaken for expertise.

But none of these things proves that a person understands the issue.

A person can be educated and still be wrong.
A person can be articulate and still be uninformed.

A person can be politically influential and still misunderstand a document.

And someone can be completely convinced about something and still be wrong.

That is why evidence matters.
This is not an NDC problem or an NPP problem
We should be honest with ourselves.
This problem does not belong exclusively to one political party.

If an NPP supporter accepts every allegation against the NDC simply because it comes from an NPP leader, that is a problem.

If an NDC supporter rejects every allegation against the NDC simply because it comes from the NPP, that is also a problem.

The standard must be the same.
If the evidence supports our side, accept it.

If the evidence contradicts our side, accept that too.

Otherwise, we are not defending truth.
We are defending a political identity.
And there is a profound difference between the two.

Perhaps we need to learn to say: “I don't know yet.”

There is nothing intellectually shameful about withholding judgment.

In fact, sometimes it is the most responsible position a person can take.

On the GoldBod controversy, I would rather hear someone say:

“I have seen the report, but I need to understand the methodology before I conclude.”

than hear someone confidently make a sweeping declaration simply because it supports the political party they support.

We should not be afraid of uncertainty.
Uncertainty is not ignorance.
Sometimes uncertainty is simply the honest position we occupy before the evidence becomes clear.

And when experts themselves are debating the interpretation of a complicated financial figure, ordinary citizens should not be pressured into pretending that the matter is already settled.

The people deserve better
Ghanaians deserve political debate.
They deserve criticism of governments.
They deserve opposition voices.
They deserve robust journalism.
They deserve accountability.
But they also deserve something more fundamental:

They deserve the truth or, at the very least, an honest attempt to establish it.

Those who have the privilege of education, influence and access to national platforms therefore have a responsibility that goes beyond winning an argument.

The objective should be to help the public understand.

Media houses should not merely ask, “Who can give us the most explosive argument?”

They should also ask:
“Who actually understands this subject?”

Political leaders should not only ask, “How can I use this issue against my opponent?”

They should ask:
“What does the evidence actually show?”

And educated citizens should not ask only:
“What is my party saying?”
They should ask:
“What is the evidence saying?”
Because at the end of the day, the US$1.7 billion debate is not only about GoldBod.

It is about the quality of our national conversation.

It is about whether we are raising citizens who can interrogate information or merely repeat political narratives.

It is about whether our media platforms are helping citizens understand difficult issues or simply giving political actors bigger microphones.

And it is about whether those of us who have been given the privilege to speak publicly understand the weight of that responsibility.

When politics speaks louder than evidence, everybody loses.

Especially the ordinary Ghanaian who trusted us to explain the truth.

About the author:
Tsekpokumah Richard is an educator, climate advocate, and Founder of Ayeyi Impact Foundation. He writes on education, climate action, leadership, community development, governance, and public policy.

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