The story begins with a thunderbolt that shook the public space in August 2025: a report screamed that one in four Nigerian men is not the biological father of the child he is raising. It came with sensational headlines, the kind that force you to pause, adjust your chair, and re-read just to confirm you saw right. Intel Region carried the news, citing the 2025 Annual DNA Testing Report from Smart DNA Nigeria, the country’s leading testing centre. Numbers were dropped like grenades—25% of paternity tests excluded presumed fathers; 64% of the discrepancies involved firstborn sons. Men accounted for nearly 90% of the DNA tests; women only 11.8%. Immigration-related testing, rising sharply, was framed as a form of “second passport insurance.” If ever there was a moment when science pricked cultural nerves, this was it.
Elizabeth Digia, Smart DNA’s Operations Manager, used the findings to call for urgent reforms. She lamented the absence of laws against paternity fraud and pushed for DNA to be integrated into premarital counselling and family health programmes. She also reminded Nigerians that DNA testing should not be clouded by myths—no, it’s not for only the rich, and no, physical resemblance isn’t proof of fatherhood. In her words, “Our role is to provide certainty through accurate testing while encouraging sensitive handling of the life-changing information our clients receive.” The report, unsurprisingly, left men nervous, women defensive, and society unsettled.
But just as the dust began to rise, Daily Trust quickly fired back, branding the whole affair a case study in media misrepresentation. Hussein Adoto’s sharp critique explained that Smart DNA’s 25% “paternity exclusion rate” came from a specific, high-risk sample—men who already suspected foul play or needed DNA results for migration purposes. In statistics, this is called sampling bias. To generalise the result to “all Nigerian men” is, in Adoto’s words, “as misleading as testing sex workers for STIs and claiming the result represents the whole country.” This was not national data; it was private lab data. Still, the damage had been done. Sensationalism had already worked its magic.
And then, as if destiny conspired to keep the fire alive, Nollywood veteran Bimbo Akintola dropped her own bombshell during a podcast chat with Ayo Adesanya: “Ninety to ninety-nine per cent of Nigerian men cheat. Your father cheated, your grandfather cheated. Polygamy, polygamy—it’s in our blood.” The bluntness was Shakespearean in its tragic honesty and comic exaggeration. Her argument was simple: fidelity in Africa is an imported expectation; our cultural template is polygamy, and men have grown up watching their fathers juggle multiple women without shame. To her, infidelity is less betrayal and more inheritance.
Predictably, the internet erupted. Critics dismissed her statistics as pulled from thin air. Others applauded her for daring to say what everyone whispers. Feminists called her remarks patriarchal, an attempt to normalize men’s irresponsibility. Moralists lamented the erosion of values. Yet, at a deeper level, her words inadvertently tied into the DNA debate. If, indeed, so many men cheat, should we really be surprised at paternity scandals? Akintola’s claim, though exaggerated, tapped into what Michel Foucault once called the “regime of truth”—a cultural narrative that, whether factually precise or not, circulates as lived reality.
This is where personal observations add another layer. In Nigeria today, some of the most aggressively marketed products are not laptops or luxury cars, but aphrodisiacs and sex-enhancement drugs. Scroll through social media, and you’ll stumble on videos teaching men how to last longer, avoid the humiliation of being called “one-minute men,” and keep partners “satisfied.” In Lagos, a young lady narrated how wives are casually shared among neighbours “like film.” In rural areas, newspaper reports often detail court cases and violent clashes over women. Sex, fidelity, and masculinity are not just private matters here; they are public battlegrounds.
This culture of sexualisation cuts across social classes. Lecturers are accused of sex-for-marks, celebrities flaunt sugar-daddy patronage, politicians bankroll mistresses, and even clerics—supposed moral guardians—face allegations of manipulation. Reality shows like BBNaija glamorize sexual competition more than intellectual feats. To borrow from sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, we live in a “liquid modernity” where everything, including intimacy, is commodified. If history is any guide, it has always been so. Stories of kings demanding other men’s wives, or powerful chiefs parading numerous concubines, suggest that what we now frame as “infidelity” was once paraded as prestige.
Still, claims like Akintola’s are problematic. To say “99.9% of Nigerian men cheat” is to erase individuality, dismiss men who remain faithful, and caricature Nigerian masculinity before the world. It is like the infamous statistic that “77% of Nigerian women bleach their skin,” which global media ran with for years until scholars traced it back to a tiny Lagos-based survey of traders in 2002. As Adoto reminded us, once numbers are sensationalised, they acquire a life of their own, stubbornly resistant to correction. They become myths disguised as facts.
Law also complicates matters. Barrister Lakpene Yusuf Bida argued in his essay, “The Existence of Marriage Forecloses DNA as a Paternity Determinant,” that Nigerian law prioritises presumption of paternity once a marriage exists. Sections 165 of the Evidence Act and 84 of the Matrimonial Causes Act essentially shield marital children from being disowned by DNA revelations. To the law, marriage trumps molecules. This raises an intriguing philosophical question: is fatherhood biological or social? Aristotle once wrote that “man is by nature a political animal”; perhaps fatherhood too is a cultural construction, not merely a genetic fact.
And here enters the question of emotional intelligence. Happiness, psychologists tell us, often depends less on objective reality than on the stories we tell ourselves. Daniel Kahneman distinguishes between the “experiencing self” and the “remembering self”—we live realities but narrate them selectively. Many married women are advised not to check their husbands’ phones, not because their suspicions are unfounded, but because peace sometimes lies in chosen ignorance. Information is only useful if it heals; otherwise, it poisons. Curiosity, after all, killed the cat.
Where does all this leave us? Perhaps in a paradox. DNA science insists on truth, yet cultural norms insist on harmony. Celebrity opinions exaggerate, yet they echo whispers from our streets and homes. Misreporting distorts, yet it exposes the fragility of trust in society. What is clear is that infidelity, paternity, and fidelity are not just personal choices; they are entangled in culture, law, economics, history, and even global migration. Nigeria is negotiating all of these at once.
Maybe, as Akintola provocatively suggested, we need to lower our expectations. Or maybe, as critics argue, we should raise the bar for mutual respect and fidelity. Either way, one thing is certain: the DNA palaver has forced us to ask uncomfortable questions about who we are, how we love, and what we choose to believe. And in a country where happiness is often a matter of imagination, perhaps the ultimate choice is not whether men cheat or women deceive, but whether we can create illusions strong enough to carry us through the chaos of reality.
Bagudu can be reached on bagudumohammed15197@gmail.com and 07034943575
