By Olukorede Yishau
THERE IS a new report that troubles me. Its findings about Nigeria, where trust in science can influence whether a parent vaccinates a child, whether a patient follows a doctor’s advice and whether a community accepts a public health intervention that could save lives, are not cheering.
The latest findings of the Wellcome Global Monitor deserve serious attention. The survey, which covers more than 140,000 people in 140 countries, shows that trust in science has declined globally since the COVID-19 pandemic and is now below its 2018 level.
Nigeria’s experience reflects this troubling trend. Although the proportion of Nigerians expressing strong trust in science has recovered slightly since 2020, it remains considerably below where it stood before the pandemic.
In 2018, 26 per cent of Nigerians said they trusted science a lot. By 2020, that figure had fallen to 13 per cent. It rose modestly to 15 per cent in 2025. The recovery is welcome, but it is hardly reassuring. The country remains 11 percentage points below its pre-pandemic level. Overall, 57 per cent of Nigerians reported at least some trust in science in 2025.
These figures do not mean that Nigerians have turned against science, nor do they establish that the pandemic alone caused the decline.
They, however, raise questions about why strong confidence has weakened and what governments, scientists and public institutions can do to restore it.
A society does not need every citizen to become a scientist, but it does need citizens to have sufficient confidence in reliable evidence to make informed decisions about their health and their lives.
The survey’s findings on vaccination make the challenge more concrete. Asked whether they would take a vaccine recommended by a doctor or nurse, 35 per cent of Nigerian respondents said they would take it immediately. Another 36 per cent preferred time to think about it, while 24 per cent said they did not take vaccines at all.
The distinction matters. Someone who wants time to consider a vaccine is not necessarily opposed to vaccination. That person may have questions about safety, effectiveness, possible side effects or whether the vaccine is appropriate for them. Such concerns should not automatically be dismissed as ignorance.
The more useful question is whether people can obtain clear, credible answers that allow them to make informed decisions.
The COVID-19 pandemic offers an important context for understanding this problem. Governments and health authorities across the world were forced to make decisions during an unprecedented public health emergency.
Scientific knowledge developed as researchers gathered evidence about the virus, its transmission and the effectiveness of interventions. Recommendations sometimes changed because the evidence changed.
That is not, in itself, a weakness of science. Scientific knowledge advances through observation, testing, scrutiny and the revision of conclusions when better evidence becomes available.
But explaining this process to the public requires care. When authorities communicate uncertainty poorly, or present provisional conclusions as though they are beyond question, subsequent changes can be interpreted as evidence of incompetence or dishonesty.
Nigeria must nevertheless resist the temptation to explain its figures entirely through the global experience of COVID-19. The country’s own social and economic circumstances deserve examination.
For many Nigerians, the most immediate encounter with science is not a laboratory or a research institution, but a hospital, a clinic, a pharmacy or a conversation with a health professional.
The Wellcome report offers evidence of an association between trust in science and confidence in healthcare institutions. Globally, 43 per cent of people who expressed a lot of confidence in their country’s hospitals and health clinics also reported a lot of trust in science. Across the survey population, 26 per cent reported a lot of trust in science.
The figures do not prove that confidence in hospitals causes confidence in science, but they suggest that people’s experiences of healthcare institutions are an important part of the wider trust question.
This should concern Nigerian policymakers. It is difficult to build public confidence in scientific progress when the benefits of that progress remain inaccessible to many of the people who need them.
A breakthrough that improves the treatment of a disease means little to a family that cannot afford the medicine required. A public health recommendation is less persuasive when the service needed to act on it is unavailable or beyond a household’s means.
Economic insecurity adds another dimension. Globally, 39 per cent of people who said they were living comfortably reported a lot of trust in science in 2025, compared with 20 per cent of those who said they found it difficult to get by financially.
The report also found that strong trust declined more sharply between 2020 and 2025 among people struggling financially than among those living comfortably.
These findings do not establish that poverty automatically produces distrust. They do suggest, however, that public attitudes cannot be understood in isolation from people’s daily realities.
Families preoccupied with food, rent, school fees and medical bills may have fewer resources to seek reliable information or act on professional advice. When institutions seem disconnected from those struggles, their pronouncements may carry less weight.
The survey also identifies differences across age groups, with younger Nigerians more likely than older respondents to report high levels of trust in science.
The figures do not establish why this difference exists. It may be worth investigating whether educational experiences, access to digital information or familiarity with scientific developments help explain the pattern.
What should not follow is the assumption that younger people are immune to misinformation or that older people are inherently resistant to scientific knowledge.
Nigeria’s figures are also part of a wider African concern. Across sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion of people reporting a lot of trust in science fell from 28 per cent in 2018 to 21 per cent in 2025. Over the same period, the share reporting no trust at all rose from five per cent to nine per cent.
The regional trend makes it important to ask not only how science is communicated, but also who produces the knowledge, whose problems research addresses and who benefits from its results.
African countries need research that responds to local priorities and gives local researchers and communities meaningful roles in shaping scientific agendas. International collaboration remains valuable, but it should complement rather than displace local expertise.
When communities can see their concerns reflected in research and can access the resulting benefits, science becomes less remote from their everyday lives.
There is a danger in responding to declining trust by demanding that people believe scientists simply because they are scientists. Scientific authority should rest on evidence and rigorous methods, not on the expectation that professional status places anyone beyond scrutiny.
At the same time, respecting public questions does not require treating unsupported claims as equivalent to conclusions backed by strong evidence. Healthy scepticism examines claims against the available evidence; it does not reject evidence merely because it is inconvenient.
The Wellcome Global Monitor does not offer a single explanation for the decline in trust, and its findings should not be used to declare that Nigerians have abandoned science. The fact that 57 per cent reported at least some trust in science suggests that a substantial foundation remains.
But the decline in strong trust, from 26 per cent in 2018 to 15 per cent in 2025, should not be brushed aside as a minor statistical fluctuation.
My final take: Trust in science, or anything else, cannot be commanded into existence. It can only be earned through evidence, openness and results that people can see in their own lives.
For Nigeria, rebuilding that trust goes beyond communication, but it encompasses building a society in which knowledge can translate into better health, greater opportunity and a more secure future.
Quote:
Trust in science, or anything else, cannot be commanded into existence. It can only be earned through evidence, openness and results that people can see in their own lives.
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