Paternity Fraud: Should Offenders Go to Jail?
Crime & Punishment
Funke Olaode
Otubu (not real name) was a successful banker in the late 90s. He was adored by all. Savvy, handsome and intelligent. He was considered a very spiritual one and even headed A Pentecostal church in the highbrow area of Lagos. Good job, good connections and a happy home. Things were going smoothly until the bubble burst when it was alleged that he went into an illicit affair with a church member’s wife and fathered the only two children of that union.
It was proved by DNA.
That was the end of the union, and the savvy banker quit his job and pastoral life and fled the country. He returned to the country not too long ago and tried to warm himself back to society, but his tainted image was not forgotten.
If Otubu’s case was pathetic, it was a celebrated case that lasted several weeks when a Lagos business mogul found out that he did not father one of the children of his then-trophy wife. Painful and devastating, the woman was ordered out of the house with the illegitimate child. Of course, it ended the once-upon-a-time talk of celebrity matrimony.
For those who are familiar with a popular Yoruba programme being anchored by Oriyomi Hamzat on Lagidigbo FM, ’Kokoro Alate’, it was an emotional show of shame when a couple dragged themselves to the radio station over paternity issues. It was discovered that four children of the 23-year-old marriage did not belong to the man of the house.
Another new-generation bank top gun was also enmeshed in a paternity scandal when it was alleged and accused by the husband of one of his employees that he fathered his children under his nose. The pathetic case was the sudden death of the husband of the employee, and of course, the bank eased the man out of the system to avoid further damage to its reputation.
A Thisday report, ‘DNA Testing Bombshell: 1 in 4 Nigerian Men Not Biological Fathers’, written by a Senior Writer, Ms. Mary Ekah, lent credence to this biological alteration and misrepresentation that have been going on from time immemorial. It was a shocking report by Smart DNA, a leading DNA testing centre in Lagos, revealed that a staggering 27 per cent of DNA of paternity tests conducted came back negative.
The issue of paternity fraud, incidentally, like so many other frauds looking at it from the legal angle, is a fraud because it is deceitful. However, from another perspective, it is an offshoot of matrimonial causes and issues related to marriage. The argument is, like other frauds for which the offenders are prosecuted and sent to jail, the matrimonial deception expert says it is a delicate one that will be difficult to criminalise.
Barrister Ben Abraham, the founder of Zarephath Aid (criminal justice reforms and legal aid), said, “It is a very delicate issue, and that is where one is going to be very careful because even in our criminal jurisprudence and laws, as we inherited from our colonial masters, it says that the husband and wife cannot be charged with the offence of conspiracy, for example. But then, it is one of the emerging areas, just as we have so many things in a global, in a world where so many things are going wrong, there is so much anxiety, there are needs coming up, and these needs bring up new areas that ask our jurisprudence, and therein we begin to see that there are so much lacunae that need to be filled.”
The legal practitioner added, “So, paternity fraud, as it’s called, is one of them. We have seen quite a number of big cases, and there are so many other cases, which are unreported, situations where a man stays with a woman and at the end of the day, after training the children up to university, sometimes after the marriage of the children to their spouses, the man discovers that he was not the father.”
Shifting away from what the law says, Abraham thinks it is a moral dilemma and issue. Again, when the issues are deliberated from the Christian, the Muslim, and the traditionalist angle, what does it portend?
“How does it sound from the religious angle that a woman deliberately, some of the time they have reasons, every woman has a reason for doing that. But let’s look at it from a deliberate angle,” Abraham explained. “Deliberately goes out, knowingly, saying that this man I am living with, either because the man cannot father a child, she knows, or because of other reasons, takes on another man, gets pregnant thereby, then hides it. There is a moral dilemma. There is a religious issue there. And when we begin to look at it, there is a thought dilemma.“
The issue of paternity extends beyond the couple involved. There is a third party: the child or children.
“When we talk about criminalising it, the main fraud which you have called it is, what happens to the children in these illicit affairs? The family acceptability, the family acceptability and the stigma of the society,” Abraham stressed.
According to Abraham, the consequences are enormous—for instance, the pains of coming from a union now regarded as illegitimate.
“There are cultures that accept children born out of wedlock when the man fails to pay the bride price. Automatically, such a child becomes part of her biological mother’s lineage,” the lawyer explained. “The paternity ‘fraud’ goes beyond that as the biological father is not aware that a child is hanging over his neck somewhere. The popular saying is that ‘women only know the real father of her child’. And if the truth comes out, the man can even deny it.”
But can the law take its full course in this matter?
“Most men will tell you, this should be made an offence in our criminal code, and that woman should be sent to jail because she did evil,” said Abraham. “Our jurisprudence must be very well looked at to handle it. But don’t forget that in some cases, the bond has already existed between that man and the children. We see it every day.”
The lawyer pointed out that sometimes the child is up to 12 years or 13 years.
“In some cases, it is a brilliant child. A child that is full of fun. And to break that bond now becomes another dilemma. So we now look at it from the entire gamut of situations facing the couple on the one hand, and then the larger family and then the society on the other hand,” Abraham reasoned.
He also highlighted the role of age.
“Depending on the man’s age, don’t forget. Younger men will get so angry and forget everything. A man in his 50s or 60s will look at it and still find a way to accommodate the child. The child looks at him as daddy. They bonded,” the legal practitioner noted. “That is also another dilemma in the school of jurisprudence. When we begin to talk about criminalising this, call it fraud.”
The lawyer admitted that Nigeria does not have “those laws that can effectively remand a woman in custody who cheated” but pointed out that “we have bigamy and all of that, which even as we speak today, we don’t even know whether such offences even exist.”
Abraham, however, urged married couples to embrace openness in communication.
“The basis of marriage is openness. Nakedness. For Christians, as we read in Genesis when the first couple recorded in the Bible were naked and were not ashamed. That is the first and primary law. Of course, we see that so many women today have been denounced because of this so-called fraud,” the legal practitioner explained.
He recommended that a man “who is not fertile should come out clean.”
Abraham said, “We have such instances. And then someone will say, should two wrongs make a right? No. In a situation where the man is hiding it, the woman, on the other hand, should not have gone out to also get seed from outside. A couple should, number one, be open.”
He also underscores the value of love in enshrining openness in a marriage.
“Again, the true love, which is the foundation of marriage, abhors secrecy of that nature. Or of any nature that one knows that, at the end of the day will jeopardise the entire union. These women, in particular, will have their reasons,” stated the legal practitioner. “But what reason will at the end of the day justify the fact that a woman went out, took in for another man, brought children in the house of her husband, and kept it secret?”
Some men discover the secret that there is a love child.
“Depending on the stage, they may, after some time of pleading and talking, end up accepting the child or children and now know that the rest of their lives they are going to live with this burden. That is why criminalising it may not be very, very easy; the situations will end up being different.
“I know that most men nowadays are going for paternity tests, DNA tests, the genetic tests for their children secretly. All manner of things are coming up, showing the increasing rate of distrust. The bottom line is that couples need to get it right. Those who have problems should seek help. Open communication is key as this move will prevent irreparable damage.”
Chukwueke Family Feud: Court Stops Sibling from Dealing with Companies’ Assets
Wale Igbintade
The crisis rocking the family business of the Chukwueke family of Awaka, Owerri in Imo has snowballed into a legal battle, as the Lagos Division of the Federal High Court restrained Dr. Anthony Onuegbu Chukwueke, his two companies from dealing with the assets and properties belonging to Germaine Group of Companies.
Justice Ibrahim Ahamad Kala, in his judgment, granted an order of perpetual injunction restraining the second, third, seventh and eighth defendants, whether by themselves or through their servants, agents and or privies or whosoever is acting from dealing with the assets and properties belonging to the Germaine firms.
Listed as defendants in the suit are Germaine Sales Limited, Dr. Anthony Onuegbu Chukwueke, Onyx Multi Ventures Services Limited, Germaine Auto Centre Limited (Formerly Germaine Auto- Care Centre Limited), Germaine Properties & Investment Limited, Ego Nwawuba Nigeria Limited, Mr. Emeka Okolo, Ajime Consulting & Management Limited, Chief Gerald Ndudi Chukwueke, Registrar General, Corporate Affairs Commission, Germaine Health Centre Limited, and Germaine Pharmaceuticals Limited.
The orders of the court were sequel to a suit filed before the court by a consortium of six lawyers on behalf of an aggrieved member of the family, Mr. Ambrose Uba Chukwueke, who is a major shareholder of the fourth, fifth, 11th, and 12th defendants’ companies complaining, about Dr. Anthony Chukwueke his blood brother’s alleged illegal antics to take over, control and exercise exclusive dominion over all of the assets and management of the companies
The plaintiff claimed that the Shareholders Agreement dated June 20, 2019 (Germaine Sales MOU), allegedly drawn by Dr. Anthony Chukwueke in collaboration with the trio of Germaine Sales Limited, Onyx Multiventures, and Ego Nwawuba Nigeria Limited, merging with the fourth, fifth, 11th and 12th defendants’ companies into a ‘Group of companies” under the control and management of the Germaine Sales Limited without any meeting of the companies to vote as shareholders and pass board resolutions in compliance with the procedure set out by the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and thus is null and void that should be set aside.
Counsel for the first to ninth defendants had argued that the creation of the ‘Group of Companies’ in the name of Germaine Sales is in the best interest of the companies as a whole to protect their assets, further their businesses, and promote the purposes for which the companies were formed, and in such manner as a faithful, diligent, careful and, ordinarily skillful manager would act in the circumstances.
However, Justice Ahmad Kala, in his judgment, said, ‘’This is not a valid reason to circumvent the law and rules on corporate governance in claiming to have acted in the best interests of the companies when the evidence of the plaintiff is otherwise a case of being more Catholic than the Pope. The right of the members of the fourth, fifth, 11th and 12th defendants’ companies to vote on whether or not to restructure their companies and or to sell their shares is statutorily fortified and cannot be tempered by any other person, including the defendants in whatsoever manner and under any guise of gesture or goodwill like in the instant Dr. Anthony Chukwueke attempted doing in active collaboration with other defendants.
‘’I, therefore, find and resolve the lone issue for determination in favour of the Plaintiff. Having regards to the facts in support of the originating motion and the issues disclosed therein, the claim succeeded in terms of prayers one, three, four, nine and 12, the same are hereby granted as prayed.’’
