MY CHILDREN ARE NOT MINE, MAKING THE CASE FOR PATERNITY TESTING - FEMI KUTI?

Icheoku says admitted certain areas of our humanity are somewhat deemed off limits for public discussion, but should this society's selective preclusion always present a bar to a forensic examination of a taboo, which everyone knows is happening in our society? Icheoku decided to finally comment on this because of the prevalent, spiraling incidences of wives and mothers continuously fooling around and getting pregnant outside their matrimonial relationships. Icheoku had always thought it was a tale by moonlight or rather exaggerated until one woman personally sort my opinion on what she should do regarding her seventeen year old son who was not biologically sired by her husband of twenty something years? According to her story, she is in a bitter divorce proceedings with her husband and she wants to strike him very hard and where it would hurt him most. To do this, she wants to go public that "their" son, whom her husband truly believed was his biological child and whom he has been doting on so much as a good caring father for seventeen years of his life, was indeed actually fathered by their neighbor? To further double-down on her soon to be ex-husband, she said she was going to elope with the neighbor, the co-husband,  who is also in the process of divorcing his own wife because of their advanced plan. Icheoku was aghast but somehow managed to reason with her to please calm down, advising her not to facilitate the husband's quick exit from this world through a sudden heart attack which such a disclosure might herald. 

Query, which man would not swoon and immediately give up the ghost, prior brief illness or no prior brief illness, upon such traumatic shock of hearing that your son, in whom you are well pleased to continue your gene propagation, is indeed not carrying your genetic mapping code? Please just show Icheoku such a man and Icheoku would readily show you several women who will be happy to learn of their husbands' love-children, especially those who happen to be sons and senior to these wives' own first sons? Further, a woman once confided to Icheoku that it is only a woman who indeed knows who the actual father of her children is; adding in support that so many children do not often belong to their so called father and husband of their mother. Even some study put the figure of such children born to the other guy while still married to this guy to close to 37%? The case of the "doubtful sire" it is called, which William Shakespeare equally acknowledged in "The Taming of the Shrew", wherein Pendant was asked by Vincentio if he was the father of Lucentio? He replied "Ay (yes) sir, so his mother says, if I may believe her?" 

This is a universally acknowledged regularly occurring happenstance, which has always been around ever since the concept of marriage began, with wives, unlucky in love at home, engaging in outside dalliances resulting in pregnancies? And playing a devil's advocate, it is arguable that the biblical story of Mary, mother of Jesus, was such a similarly impregnated outside her marital home wife    of Joseph, admitted by the Holy Spirit with blessings from On High?  A phenomenon hitherto thought to be restricted to very loose societies, is increasingly becoming a common happening in more closely nit societies, including Igboland, where such is greatly frowned at and particularly considered a taboo. There was this case of this Igbo chief who flew her pregnant wife abroad for delivery and died of heart attack when the wife popped out a slanted-eyes Chinese looking child. According to the story, the Igbo business man had some Chinese expatriates working for him in his factory and  then you may fill up the rest of the story. Icheoku also once came across this wife who successfully convinced her husband that their sun-tanned skin, curly haired Lebanese-Arab looking baby boy, looks like her maternal uncle's great grandfather - a fable she fabricated just to cover her sin of infidelity.  

The other day Icheoku tuned in to a television paternity-test show, The Maury Show, where a woman, confused as to which one of her two current boyfriends is the father of her seven months old child, brought two of them for a paternity test. To the chagrin of many in the audience and those who tuned in including Icheoku, the DNA test determined that none of the two men she brought  to the show fathered her child; and you begin to wonder what is indeed going on with some women. So the question becomes should men insist on biologically testing their supposed children for their paternity before acknowledging them as their children or should the sleeping dog be allowed to lay, since what one does not know does not usually hurt? But with due respect to whatever position people might be comfortable with taking, Icheoku would like to know if what is deemed mine is indeed actually mine; otherwise why bother? Luckily enough, there are companies now providing paternity testing in Nigeria, so it makes it easier now for any doubtful father to take that step and free his soul of such a burden of suspicion and avoid being the only one who does not know what the whole town is gossiping about? 

Kanye West, in 'Gold Digger,' rapped about this recurring decimal in societies, where women mislead men into believing that the child they are taking care of is their own biological child when the contrary is the truth. Not too long ago Femi Kuti discovered that some of his "children", from his wife of many years, are indeed not his biological children. So what should a man faced with this tragic experience or who is simply suspicious that his child might not afterall be his, do, many would ask? The answer seems to be to be like Femi Kuti, when in doubt, insist that the child gets tested for paternity. But whether a child is a child as some people would rather have it, should not apply especially when such was deceitfully procured. It should not be a case of letting a sleeping dog to lay down because of unforeseeable consequences in form of possible reiteration by such an outed and shamed wife; otherwise how does any man ensure that his gene is being truly passed on? 

Icheoku asks how else would genealogy be maintained if this practice is allowed to fester and go on unchallenged and unchecked? How else can this poisoned practice be checked or even completely eradicated if not through a frontal attack with the weapon of science. It  is not only a deadly betrayal which in some cultures, results in the man's instant death once he eats such wife's prepared meal, but is also a sin against both God and humanity. A married woman prancing around while in her matrimonial home is tragic promiscuity, moreso when a pregnancy results from the illicit behavior. It would be a different case where a man cannot produce or shoots only blanks and a smart woman, not wanting to deflate the man's ego, goes into an overdrive seeking a child for him; and in some cases with the man's blessing? But where this is not the case, and the man is virile enough to get his wife pregnant and have previously in the past gotten her pregnant and had babies with her, such perfidy should be an unforgiven abomination. Icheoku asks how could any woman from a good home ever put herself in such a dizzying love triangle, resulting in a child with another man  and deceitfully passing off such illegitimate child to her live-in husband as his own? Adopting or even fostering a child is one thing and it is good help to both the child and the society at large; but stealthily and subtly smuggling another man's child home is another thing all together. Any child could be a child in that circumstance, but not when the man has no problem manufacturing his own direct biological offspring. 

Icheoku asks are you a Femi Kuti or a Femi Kuti's wife in this case and are those children you think that are yours, indeed really yours; or are they children of your neighbor or your wife's boss? Are you just a "muuguu" being used and merely playing a role of a father to some bastards, who unbeknownst to you, were the fruits of your wife's secret liaisons? Have you considered your options faced with such circumstance? And for all those women guilty of this immoral mortal deception, have you considered coming out clean to confess to your husband or do you plan to defend your actions before God on judgment day and what would you plead in defense? Would you rather die with such guilt feeling and living through the hell of a guilty heart and wondering if ever your sins will catch up with you? In any event, is there really anything to negotiate or discuss following your being discovered? And for those men who are victims of their wives' induced fathering of another man's child, what are your options and have you thought about it lately? Anyway, whatever works for any individual out there but some of this insanity ought to and should  stop. 

But for all those men who are brave enough to brace the issue, just follow the rule of the thumb approach. If you suspect that "your" child is not behaving like someone you sired or have no physical resemblance whatsoever with your family and you also have the heart to take whatever the result might yield, then for the life of Icheoku, please get him or her tested for paternity. Instead of unknowingly playing a role of a father while not being the actual father or suspects that your wife may not have yielded your own engineered offspring, why not follow the example of Femi Kuti and clear the fog of doubt or suspicion? If they prove to be genuinely yours, then love your wife the more and spoil her with good gifts to honor her decency and respect for your marital rights to father your children through her. If not, then do the needful or suffer the humiliation of knowing that you were shortchanged badly by the woman you call wife and mother of your children. But the call is yours to make but please do not ever blame Icheoku for any unbearable fall out therefrom resulting. Like Femi Kuti, refuse to be beguiled into fathering children that are not yours, not sired, adopted or fostered by you; and courageously tell her they are not yours and politely give them back to her for a return to sender.