Real life is indeed crazier than fiction. One Friday, a middle-aged man with a face etched with the maps of a nomadic life and confusion so profound that it seemed to alter the very air around him, came to the hospital looking for answers. He was in a quagmire and wondered if his enemies had finally caught up with him. His story arrived not in a linear narrative but fractured pieces like shards of a broken pot he was desperately trying to glue back together.
Twenty-three years ago, in the bustling, anonymous ghetto of Lagos, he had entered a Muta’a marriage. For my non-Muslim readers, this is a temporary, time-bound marriage contract permissible in the Shia Islamic tradition. It is a union with a predetermined expiration date. His lasted six months and he moved on; a Fulani man tracing the familiar paths of his heritage, eventually putting down roots in Zaria, where he built a life with two wives and seven children.
The woman from Lagos became a ghost, a faint memory until a rumour, whispered years ago, resurfaced with a vengeance. She had claimed to be pregnant when they parted. He had never seen a child, never received a message. The rumour faded until a few days ago when the ghost materialised at his doorstep.
There she was, his ex-wife, accompanied by a 21-year-old woman she presented as his daughter. The reason for this sudden apparition after two decades? The young woman was due for marriage and her suitor required family consent. The foundation of his settled life in Zaria trembled. He knew seven children and two wives he provided for; was there an eighth? A stranger who shared his blood?
His request was simple, yet it carried the weight of a lifetime: ‘Doctor, I want to know if she is truly my own?’
I was as clueless and confused as the day I heard about the forged certificate scandal of a certain minister. To be quite honest, I am still dazed. Was he not cleared by the State Security Service (SSS)? If the SSS is not doing their job correctly, then who the hell is? A whole science and technology? Not minister of tourism (no offence), not humanitarian o! Science, technology and innovation that should be the backbone of our country; that is the one we are doing wuruwuru with. That is what we are playing politics with.
Like someone said: ‘If they explain Nigeria to you and you understand, then you are part of the problem.’
Wallahi, I don’t understand. Just as I don’t understand how you can enter into a ‘temporary marriage’ with a woman. What about the Islamic ‘Iddah’ period? Is that not what it is meant for?
Anyway, let me mind my business. I quickly put a few calls to my colleagues in the lab in order to find a reputable lab where paternity screening is done. And that is where another wahala started. His journey for a simple paternity test became a detective story, exposing a landscape rife with fraud and scientific deception.
He was referred to a laboratory that proudly advertised, ‘DNA Paternity Testing.’ But a closer look revealed the scam. What they were offering was not DNA analysis but basic blood group matching. The principle is rudimentary: If the child’s blood group is one that couldn’t possibly result from the combination of the alleged parents,’ then paternity can be excluded. But if it is possible, it means nothing; absolutely nothing.
Let me be clear: Blood group compatibility is a rough, archaic suggestion, not proof. It is like identifying a criminal because he was seen in the same city as the crime; it excludes the innocent in only a few specific scenarios but never confirms the guilty. The chance of accurately confirming paternity this way is nowhere near 50 per cent.
These laboratories are peddling false certainty, cashing in on the desperation of men and women in the midst of identity crises, charging them for a result that is, at best, an educated guess, and at worst, a life-altering lie.
True DNA paternity testing is the gold standard. It compares specific genetic markers between the alleged father, mother and child. The accuracy is 99.9 per cent for exclusion and inclusion. But it is expensive. And in northern Nigeria, it is scarce. Samples often have to be carefully collected and shipped to Abuja or Lagos, a process that requires a chain of custody as meticulous as a police evidence log. This logistical and financial hurdle is what creates the vacuum that these fraudulent labs so eagerly fill.
As I guided this man towards a legitimate testing centre, my mind kept returning to the Muta’a marriage at the heart of this drama. To many, it is a religious provision, but to others, a controversial practice. But in this man’s story, it was the genesis of a profound human dilemma – a union with a built-in end date, potentially creating a lifelong, unbreakable bond in the form of a child. It highlights the immense responsibility that accompanies any union, temporary or permanent, and the long shadows it can cast.
What about the young woman in question who is at the centre of this storm? What must she be feeling? Her entire identity, the name she carries, the lineage she claims, hangs on the result of this test. She is a potential daughter in search of a father; her future marriage suspended in the limbo of a biological truth. This is more than a paternity test; it is a quest for self.
For the confused father who came, the question is equally existential. To accept a new daughter is to recalibrate his entire life’s narrative, his financial obligations and emotional landscape. To reject her is to live with the ghost of a child that could have been his.
We live in an age where science can offer us the ultimate clarity on questions of lineage that would have haunted generations past. But when that science is gate-kept by cost and corrupted by fraud, we fail people at their most vulnerable state.
Why must we always exploit the vulnerable? How can you claim to be doing DNA paternity testing and yet churn out half-baked result based on probability? An answer that could change and destroy lives and future generations to come? Is nothing sacrosanct in this country?
His samples are on their way to a proper lab now. Soon, a machine will spell out a truth that will change lives irrevocably. I pray that whatever the result, he, his potential daughter and the family he has built in Zaria, find the grace to navigate the aftermath.