At least 32 men in Uganda have written to the Directorate of Citizenship and Immigration Control (DCIC), demanding the cancellation of children’s passports after DNA results showed they are not the biological fathers.
Mr Simon Peter Mundeyi, the Ministry of Internal Affairs spokesperson, said the men whose details they have decided to keep confidential, applied and acquired passports for their wives and children. But after conducting DNA tests and realised the children do not belong to them, they have now gone back demanding that their details be removed from the children’s passports.
Mr Mundeyi said that as DCIC, they cannot cancel passports unless the complainants go to National Identification Registration Authority (NIRA) to change their details.
DCIC says men have been inspired to carry out DNA tests on their children by the recent stories in the media about their counterparts who have realised that not all the offspring in their homes are actually theirs.
One of the latest cases is of a man who works in Europe but when he took his six children for DNA testing, the results showed that he sired none of them. The man has been educating all six children in international schools.
Heated quarrel
Mr Mundeyi said that the man was prompted to take the six children for DNA analysis after a heated quarrel with his wife who told him that some of the children were not his.
Although the wife apologised that she made the statement out of anger, the man went ahead and conducted secret DNA tests at the Directorate of Government Analytical Laboratory (DGAL).
“When the results were out, he contested them, but being a person of means, we advised him to take samples to other laboratories. He took some samples to Canada and others to South Africa. All the samples confirmed what our DGAL had found out – none of the six children was his,” Mundeyi said.
Dozens of men have been flocking to the Ministry of Internal Affairs with exhibits such as hair cut off from their children for DNA tests but have been advised to take the children to the Government Analytical Laboratory (DGAL).
Some have taken children’s nails to DGAL but have been bounced and told to instead take the children for blood samples.
