Paternity fraud, when betrayal wears a child’s face, by Stephanie Shaakaa
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They say betrayal wears many masks, but none cuts deeper than the smile of a child who is not yours, raised in your name, carrying your bloodline in title but not in truth. This is not adultery. It is not divorce. It is something far darker, a silent epidemic that festers in homes across the world, and especially in ours. It is paternity fraud,the calculated deception of passing off another man’s child as a husband’s. It is the most brutal, soul-crushing betrayal a marriage can ever know.
Nothing wounds deeper than a lie that walks, talks, and calls you father.
Betrayal has many faces. The cruelest of them all calls you Daddy.
Marriage is built on trust. But what happens when that trust is murdered in cold blood, not by a fleeting affair, but by a deception so cruel it strikes at the very heart of family? A man raises a child with pride, believing he is passing down his bloodline, only to one day discover through a DNA test that the name he gave rests on lies. His wife, who should be his partner in truth, sleeps beside him every night, guarding the secret like a dagger under her pillow. Our people say, a child belongs to the mother, but the name belongs to the father. What then becomes of a name built on falsehood? What becomes of a marriage when the very foundation is poisoned by deceit? This is not love. This is not loyalty. This is warfare disguised as family.
The child becomes the innocent victim. An innocent soul grows up in the shadows of lies, deprived of identity, belonging, and the dignity of truth. And when the truth finally breaks as it always does the scars it leaves are permanent. Imagine being twenty-five and learning that the man you have called father all your life is not bound to you by blood. Your surname, your identity, your place in a family all suddenly fragile illusions. The ground beneath you shifts, and you are left to rebuild yourself from pieces of a truth you never asked for. That is the wound children of paternity fraud must carry forever.
And what of the men? Some mock them, how could a man not know? How could he live under the same roof, eat at the same table, sleep beside the same woman, and never suspect? But love is not suspicion. Many men choose trust, some out of fear, some out of love, and many because society has taught them that questioning paternity is weakness. That DNA testing is an insult. That doubt is unmanly. And so men become victims, mocked for their blindness when in truth they were raised to wear it as a badge of faith. Trust should not mean foolishness. Love should not mean surrender to lies.
Society itself pays the price. Families collapse when secrets surface. Legal battles erupt. Communities fracture. Quietly, faith in marriage erodes. When fathers doubt, when children question, when mothers deceive, what remains of the family? What remains of the foundation on which society is built? Blood may be thicker than water, but what if it isn’t your blood? That is the question our time must confront.
Should DNA testing be mandatory at birth? Many recoil at the idea, calling it invasive or humiliating. But what is more humiliating, a single test at birth, or decades of deception? What is more destructive, an uncomfortable truth at the beginning, or a family shattered by lies at the end? A DNA test is not just science. It is justice. It is truth delivered before betrayal can rot the roots of a family.
Globally, studies suggest that between one percent and twenty percent of children are raised by men who are not their biological fathers, without their knowledge. In Nigeria, reports of men discovering such truths after DNA tests spark outrage, yet there is no policy response. These are not rare cases. This is a hidden epidemic that society prefers to whisper about rather than confront. But silence does not heal wounds. Silence deepens them.
Our proverbs do not lie. No matter how long lies travel, truth will always arrive. A borrowed garment will not fit forever. Blood cannot be hidden, it speaks in the face of the child. These are not just sayings. They are society’s quiet acknowledgment that paternity fraud cannot remain buried forever.
Men must stop equating trust with blindness. Women must stop weaponizing motherhood. And society must stop pretending this is a private matter. Paternity fraud is not private. It is a wound to justice, to family, and to identity itself.
The DNA test is not just a medical tool. It is a mirror held up to truth. And truth, no matter how painful, is the only foundation on which a marriage, a family, or a nation can stand.
If love is blind, betrayal must not be invisible. History will not remember excuses. It will remember the wounds. And until we confront the cruelty of paternity fraud with boldness, families will continue to crumble under the weight of a single lie.
Betrayal wears many masks. None is crueller than the smile of a child who isn’t yours,read that again.
Women your womb is not a license to lie.
DNA is not just science. It is justice.
We cannot continue to live in denial. DNA testing must no longer be seen as taboo but as a pathway to justice, closure, and healing. Lawmakers must create frameworks that protect the innocent, judges must treat DNA evidence with urgency, and families must embrace truth even when it hurts. Our silence only emboldens deceit.
The choice before us is simple.
Live in the comfort of lies or walk the hard road of truth. DNA is not just a test of biology, it has become a test of our morality. The question is not whether DNA will reveal the truth it always does the question is whether Nigeria is ready to confront it.
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