‘He Thinks The Children Are His’: Why Paternity Fraud Cases Are Rising

A civil servant in Abuja who prefers to be anonymous for obvious reasons was reacting to an old interview of Uzoamaka Ohiri, ex-wife of popular radio presenter, Chinedu Emmanuel (a.k.a Nedu Wazobia), which made the rounds on social media not too long ago.

She said some “paternity frauds occur because the woman had no choice,” and blamed the pressure on married women to bear children as the cause.

While speaking to THE WHISTLER in confidence, she disclosed that in the seven years she had been married to her husband, she had not been able to conceive. She went for several fertility tests during the first year of their marriage and was certified okay, but was unable to convince her husband to follow her for medical checkups to ascertain his own fertility status.

“I kept going to all sorts of places in search of solutions. Many of the places I went to, traditional and modern medical centres, all said they would not treat me alone, that the issue of fertility involves both the man and the woman. But my husband was adamant despite all my pleas,” she narrated.

After seven years of trying unsuccessfully to convince her husband to seek help, and with pressure mounting on her from her husband’s family to bear them children, she decided to sleep with another man to gain conception. She had also sensed that her husband was the cause of their childlessness.

According to her, she got pregnant during her first attempt at having extramarital sex, and gave birth to twins. She did the same two years later, and had another baby.

“It has been 10 years now and he thinks the children are his. If he had agreed to go for the checkup when I pleaded with him, whatever was the problem with him would have been detected and solved, but his ego wouldn’t let him. I have no regrets,” she said with absolute confidence.

Paternity fraud refers to misrepresentation or deception regarding the identity of a child’s biological father.

While societal pressure could be a reason for paternity fraud in the case of the above woman, many other cases are attributable to factors such as financial gain and social status, while some others are merely out of a desperate attempt to conceal infidelity.

In the case of Muridia and Yaqub Ganiyu, a Nigerian couple, the fraud would have been concealed just like that of the female civil servant earlier mentioned, but for a twist of fate.

The couple, with a similar story to Nedu’s, had their marriage shattered after the man found out that their 14-year-old daughter was not biologically his.

Muridia, the wife, would have successfully kept this secret and probably taken it with her to her grave, but fate had other plans.

Yaqub, who shared the painful story with the media last year, said his wife was six weeks pregnant for her then boyfriend, Teslim, before he married her. He added that the pregnancy was unknown to him at the time he took her as wife.

The boyfriend had rejected the pregnancy when she informed him of it. It was during this incident that Yaqub came into her life, so she pinned the pregnancy on him.

Now, after years of marriage, Teslim who was said to have traveled to Germany, came back to look for the child he had rejected because he was told by a prophet that he would never do well in life unless he went back to claim the child.

“About a month ago, she woke me up at midnight and told me that I was not the biological father of our 14-year-old daughter. She said her former boyfriend who lives in Germany is the biological father of the child,” he had said in shock.

A 2021 interview with a DNA expert, Abiodun Salami, revealed startling statistics on paternity misidentity. The senior geneticist with the DNA Centre for Paternity Test in Lagos, stated that from experience in DNA testing, most firstborns are not sired by the men they call their fathers because so many women have prior sexual relationships just before getting married.

“Most female undergraduates now have one man or another sponsoring their education aside from their fathers. These are the men that will eventually be the chairmen at their wedding,” the DNA expert revealed.

There are cases where not only the firstborn is not biologically linked to the man, but also all the other children.

That is the case of a judge of the Delta State High Court, Anthony Okorodu, who came out to announce to the world that the three children he had with his ex-wife were not his.

Okorodu, who described the development as traumatic, narrated that he had no inkling that the children were not biologically his until an unnamed source reached out to him. He had thereafter, conducted a DNA test on the three children (the last being 17 years) and was hit by the greatest shock of his life.

“I conducted DNA tests on the children. The results came out a few days later and sadly, none of them is my biological child,” he said.

Many paternity frauds have been uncovered from the increased awareness on DNA testing in Nigeria.

A forensic pathologist and physician, Prof Igwebuike Onyiorah, who spoke to THE WHISTLER said Paternity Testing as a scientific investigation into the biological fatherhood of a child, and attributed the geometric increase in DNA testing to trust deficit and suspicion in relationships, and the increased awareness of scientific solutions.

“There may also be an increase in sexual liberation in our society. People are now less afraid or ashamed to let out such family or private “ills,” he averred.

While distrust amongst married couples ranks among the commonest reasons for DNA testing, Muraina Sumbo Rukayat, a medical laboratory scientist working with the DNA Lab, Molecular Diagnostics Center, also told THE WHISTLER that other reasons for testing include the death of one of the parents, for peace of mind, or as criteria for relocating to other countries.

And putting it into proper perspective, a Lagos-based DNA testing Centre, Smart DNA, in its report, disclosed that majority of the tests conducted (about 89.10 percent) were for the purpose of deriving ‘Peace of Mind.’ It added that 8.97 percent of the cases were for Immigration purposes, while a tiny 0.64 percent was for legal purposes.

The report, therefore, implies that individuals primarily seek DNA testing to confirm biological relationships for personal reasons rather than for official reasons.

The report which was obtained from a comprehensive data analysis of all relationship-based DNA tests conducted at the center between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023, and sampled across thousands of people who had done the tests, disclosed that positive results (indicating that the man tested was the biological father of the child) accounted for 73.88 percent of the tests, while negative results made up 26.12 percent.

“This suggests that in the majority of cases, the men seeking testing are indeed the biological fathers, but then, 1 in every 4 men tested was not the biological father of “his” child,” it said.

Rukayat stated that the testing is done by comparing the unique individual DNA markers of the child with those of the alleged father.

“Each person has two of these markers, half of which he gets from his mother and the other half from his father. The father and child must share 99.99% of the same characteristics for him to be called the biological father of that child,” she said.

While paternity fraud continues to exist, there are indications that many cases will remain top secrets due to the rising cost of paternity tests in Nigeria, as not everyone can afford it.

Although the parties who wish to be tested can just walk into any DNA center for the process, it is however not that simple since the hike in the dollar exchange rate has made a lot of service deliveries very unaffordable. This fact was substantiated by Rukayat who gave the price for the “father and child” test as N180,000.

“For casual paternity, you just come to the lab and we give you a consent form to fill in your details for both parties. You make payment and we take your sample in the presence of both parties. If it is a legal case, then both parties will be required to come with their lawyers,” she explained.