Paternity fraud is when there is an intentional misidentification of a baby’s biological father.
On 17 August, 2025, the Annual DNA Testing Report by Smart DNA, a leading testing laboratory in Nigeria, showed that 25% of men tested in Nigeria were not the biological fathers of their children.
The figure was 27% in 2024.
They also reported a 13.1% increase in the number of men bringing their children for paternity tests.
The accuracy level for a positive result is 99.99%.
The probability of a wrong negative result is 0.
The test costs between 300 thousand to one million naira, depending on the laboratory in Nigeria, and the result is ready in four weeks.
Paternity fraud causes a lot of social crisis in a family as men hate raising children that are not biologically their own by deceit.
The law in Nigeria protects lying and cheating wives, and there is no penalty against paternity fraud.
What a man can do is to have paternity tests for his children before signing their birth certificates.
Many legal experts have called for mandatory paternity tests in the country, and possibly make it free, as a solution.
Nigeria has a fairly high rate of paternity fraud. In the UK, it is 1.6%, France: 1.4%, Sweden: 1.7%, and in Netherlands, it is less than 1%.
However, Jamaica has up to 34% rate of paternity fraud cases.
Questions are being asked on how representative the sample size is of the population in Nigeria.
Most people who go for paternity tests already have a high level of suspicion – the child does not look like them, the wife is suspected of cheating etc.
That nothwithstanding, the debate in the local media is hot and interesting.
And, why not?
