Three out of 10 fathers raising other men's kids

By David Odongo

The Nairobian has exclusively learnt of a scandal that has rocked the family of a Nairobi-based billionaire businessman and politician, who died less than two years ago.

Influenced by greed, the politician’s children conspired to lock the lastborn out of any inheritance since they doubted if he was a legitimate child of the dead billionaire.

The child in question belonged to the youngest wife, but his siblings from other mothers claimed their father was too old to sire the child.

To settle their differences, the family lawyer asked the deceased politicians children to do a DNA on the newborn. But since the old man had long died, it required that all the more than 10 children undergo a DNA test, so that their collective DNA can be matched with the lastborn.

But tables turned against them when after a DNA test, it was revealed that of all the billionaire’s supposed children, five were not legitimately his. However, the last-born was found to have been indeed sired by the politician!

From then on, the situation has turned into something close to a Mexican soap opera and is expected to reach the courts soon if a quick solution is not found on how the wealth will be divided.

A member of the family who spoke to The Nairobian said “It is true, all the other children wanted to deny the last-born part of the inheritance. They were greedy, and now look where greed has got them. The ones who were shouting loudest, doubting the paternity of the last-born, are the ones who were discovered to be bastards.”

The saga reveals a situation in Nairobi where men are said to be raising children that are not theirs without their knowledge. While some suspicious males may opt for secret DNA tests, others may go to their graves in ignorance.

A recent research by Statex Research, a new city pollster, reveals that almost 30 per cent of men in the city could be raising children fathered by others. The study was commissioned by a local NGO.

According to researcher Dennis Otundo, in a survey carried out between January and March this year, three out of 10 men are raising children that are not theirs.

In addition, the research reveals, six out of every 10 men who go for DNA tests find out that they have been caring for another man’s child. The data was collected from seven private laboratories in the city and the Government Chemist. There were also 457 respondents interviewed for the study.

“We found out that in all the cases at the laboratories, 37% of the men who had gone to seek paternity tests were forced by court orders, while 52% went on their own accord stemming from doubts about whether they fathered the children” says Dennis.

Further, nine out of 10 ‘illegitimate’ children are usually first-borns. This means that if the women cheated then this probably occurred during the first two years of their marriages. But some female respondents said they were in the early stages of pregnancy at the time of getting married, something their partners did not realise.

The research also found out that six out of 10 women have cheated in their marriages. In addition, seven out of 10 women, who had children out of wedlock, swore never to tell their husbands the paternity secret.

All the female respondents said they lived happily and empowering their husbands with such knowledge would damage their marriage, including the possibility of divorce or neglect. No wonder, according to the study, seven out of 10 of the marriages where the men did not know this were ranked as ‘happy’.