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It is true that the faces that represent each senior high school in the country at the prestigious National Science and Maths Quiz (NSMQ) give patrons so much to love about their schools as well as the competition itself.
The ‘yays’, the ‘wows,’ and the ‘ohs’ have become so synonymous with the competition, it makes it more desirous for many followers of the NSMQ to look forward to it every year.
While the names and faces of the boys and girls who appear on the screens are those that people cannot easily forget about, there is also one other very important part of the engines of these schools that represent them on the national stage.
These are the young men and women in the background working out complex permutations, mathematical calculations and scientific equations, but who hardly get to be heard of, or are spoken about.
In this article, GhanaWeb puts the spotlight on one such person; a young woman from the Keta Senior High School who has just completed SHS with flying colours after the release of the West African Secondary School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) results.
Scoring all As in her General Science course, Cynthia Makafui Abla Baragbor has proven to be a successful product of what the NSMQ can birth, even in the background.
Speaking with GhanaWeb through her brother Jerome Chris Mawuli, the 18-year-old who was born on November 2, 2004, said that beyond her love for science and mathematics, she loves to dance and sing.
She told GhanaWeb that with little effort by just doing what she loves and putting her mind into everything she does, she started experiencing a life of many firsts.
She started her education at the Holy Star International Academy in Aflao and later moved to the Aflao Border Basic School in 2015.
“I was admitted into class six and I assumed the first position in my first year in the school which was so overwhelming because we were over 100 students then.
“In my second-year exams, I came up second and was appointed by the head of the school to be the Office Girl,” she said.
Cynthia also explained that she became interested in a number of activities while in school, one of which was a literary competition she took part in.
She spoke about how well the competition organised by the current Member of Parliament for Ketu South, Abla Dzifa Gomashie, went for her.
“I took part in numberless competitions and the renowned one was the Write Away Contest which was organized by Hon. Dzifa Gomashie. I specifically took part in the 2nd edition of the competition which was in 3 stages. Amazingly, I qualified for all three stages, however, the final results were not released due to an undisclosed reason.
“With my final year exams into JHS 3, I fabulously assumed the first position with over 150 students in the class and I was presented with the Certificate of Excellence by the headmaster, Mr Attipoe Emmanuel Yao, for displaying excellent performance in academics,” she added.
She left the school as Girls Prefect, a position she occupied due to what she described as her “impressive results and hard work.”
Cynthia went on from there to excel in her BECE and then gained admission to the Keta Senior High School where hard work and determination got her to be selected to join the school’s National Science and Maths Quiz (NSMQ) team.
She, however, was unable to join the team on the stage although her contributions greatly added to the success of the school.
“I was selected into the Ketasco NSMQ team through hard work and diligence. Unfortunately, I was not on stage.
“…I won the overall best female science student at the 69th-anniversary celebration of the school,” she added.
Determined to pursue medicine, Cynthia’s dreams seem to be hanging in the balance due to financial constraints although she has been able to score a perfect result in her WASSCE. She is the last child and only girl among three siblings born to a father who is a farmer and a mother who is a trader.
In the words of Jerome, her elder brother, the family needs support to help her get a scholarship to study medicine at a university abroad, but that notwithstanding, they have taken initial steps to purchase admission forms for the University of Ghana (UG) and the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST).
Cynthia stated that without the help of her teachers and her other mates, she could not have achieved this much.
