Six out of every 10 children born in Nigeria might not be fathered by their presumed biological father according to data revealed by genetist, Abiodun Salami.
Speaking in an interview with premium times, Salami said experience in DNA testings has revealed that most firstborns are not fathered by the husbands at home.
Read Excerpt from the interview below;
“ The statistics are mind-blowing. You discover that almost 60 percent of the tests that people come to do are negative. In fact, 6 out of every 10 paternity tests turn out negative. Statistically, in DNA paternity testing, most times, in Nigeria, we see that six out of every 10 children might not be fathered by their biological father.
“If everyone starts doing DNA tests, the whole country will scatter. There will be no marriages again.
“Most female undergraduates now have one man or the other sponsoring their education aside from their father. These are the men that will eventually be the chairmen at their wedding. These are the men they are actually sleeping with. From experience in DNA testings, most firstborns are not fathered by the husbands at home, because these people have a prior relationship before getting married. Most times, they continue with that relationship, they don’t leave it after marriage.”
When asked if a mistake can happen in DNA Testing, he said “It is possible to make human error, especially when there is a mix-up with the sample. That is a human error but it is very rare. But there are also cases where we have Chimera’s syndrome, but it is also rare. This is when a woman’s DNA does not match that of her child. It is very rare, probably one in a million cases.”
On the cost and process of. DNA testing in Nigeria ,“ It costs about N60,000 per person, which is about N120, 000 father and child. We use different samples like the mouth swab, hair, blood, wax, sweat, chewing gum, and toothbrush. But the best is the mouth swab where you just use cotton wool, it is those lose cells from the mouth that we extract the DNA from the nucleus of those cells. Once the DNAs are extracted we then compare the genes. As a human being, I inherit half of the genes from my father and another half from my mother. So, what we do is to compare half of my father’s DNA with half of mine and there must be a complete match. If there is a complete match, then the probability of paternity is about 99.99%. If there is a mismatch in one or two or three places, it will automatically come down to zero. That means we are not related and the results are ready within a week or at least seven working days.
