When the lab envelope is opened, it isn’t just paper inside. It’s years of school fees, hospital runs, birthday cakes, and sleepless nights.
Smart DNA Nigeria’s latest report for 2025/2026 shows that 23.6% of paternity tests came back negative. In plain terms: about one in four men who walked into the lab to ask “Is this my child?” got an answer they didn’t want.
It’s a slight drop from 24% in 2024/2025, and from 26.1% in 2023. The line is falling, but the human weight behind it isn’t.
The Question That Won’t Let People Sleep
According to Smart DNA, most people don’t arrive because a court ordered them. They arrive because doubt has moved into their homes.
“Most of the men and women who come to us are not coming because anyone told them to. They come because they cannot live with the question,” said Elizabeth Digia, Smart DNA’s Operations Manager. “That is a deeply human experience, and it deserves to be treated with dignity — not sensationalism.”
The data shows who is asking. Men made 78.6% of first contacts, women 15.2%. Men aged 41 and above were the biggest group at 48%. And 59.5% of those tested were children aged five or younger. Peace-of-mind tests now make up 87% of cases, while immigration-related tests have slipped to 9.7%.
First Sons, Family Names, and a Hard Truth
The numbers cut deeper around birth order. Boys made up 56.1% of negative results among firstborns, down from 64.4% previously.
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In many Nigerian families, the first male child carries the name, the inheritance, and the future. A negative result there doesn’t just challenge a relationship. It shakes lineage, identity, and sometimes sparks legal fights over who belongs.
Experts warn against turning pain into abandonment. The child, they note, never asked to be in the middle of betrayal, anger, and grief.
Crucially, Smart DNA cautions against stretching the lab’s figures across the whole country.
The 23.6% reflects people who already had reason to doubt — not a random sample of Nigerian families. Femi Adebola, a professor of sample survey statistics at FUTA, told AFP Fact Check that applying clinic data to the entire population would be statistically wrong.
The report doesn’t prove one in four Nigerian fathers is raising another man’s child. It proves one in four people who were brave enough to test are living with a different answer. And behind that number are marriages, children, and the long, quiet wait for certainty. [Word count: 298]
