“BUT WHY?” — Oxford don recalls being questioned over his SSCE results at District Assembly

The SSCE result slip that once made Dr. George Asiamah lose faith in himself now sits in the same bag as his PhD certificate.

It is a striking reminder of just how far he has travelled. Years ago, however, that same slip represented one of the lowest points of his life.

After completing secondary school, Asiamah had been regarded as something of a “village champion.” But when his SSCE results came, that image was shattered.

He had written seven subjects and obtained four Fs and three Es.

The results hit him hard.

“Yes,” he said when asked whether the results made him stop believing in himself.

What made the situation worse was the reaction from people who eventually learned about his grades.

Instead of encouragement, he said, there was little to make him believe that he could still succeed.

“So nobody was encouraging you at all that you could actually make it?” he was asked.

“I accepted it,” he replied.

Then came an opportunity that forced him to confront the result he had been hiding.

When the government introduced the Youth Employment Programme, people in his village began asking why he was not applying.

“They didn’t know my results. Most people didn’t know,” he recalled.

The pressure eventually became too much. He initially resisted.

“I said, ‘Oh no, I don’t have interest in it.’”

But his people persisted, assuring him that his grades did not matter.

“They told me that they just want to see that you’ve completed secondary school, your results do not matter here.”

So, after hiding the results for some time, Asiamah finally gathered the courage to take the slip to the District Assembly.

He submitted it to the coordinator.

But instead of the reassurance he had hoped for, he was met with a question that would stay with him.

The coordinator looked at his results and asked:

“But why? Why are you bringing this here?”

Asiamah said he did not respond.

He simply took his result slip, carried it and went back home.

“That was one of my lowest lows,” he said.

For a young man who had once been celebrated as a village champion, the moment was deeply humiliating.

He had finally found the courage to show the results he had been hiding, only to feel that they had confirmed what he had begun to believe about himself, that perhaps his academic journey was over.

But the story of that result slip did not end at the District Assembly.

Today, Asiamah still keeps it.

In fact, he keeps it in the same bag as his PhD certificate.

“They are sitting next to each other,” he revealed.

And the contrast is not lost on him.

“One is really beautiful, one was just beautiful.”