Kisumu man allowed to remove his name from child’s birth certificate

A court in Kisumu has allowed a father to erase his name from the birth certificate of his ‘9-year-old son’ after DNA tests revealed that he was not his son.

According to the case that hit the headlines after it was covered by NTV, the father went to court after suspecting that the child was his and the tests confirmed his suspicions.

The judge ordered the birth and death registration office in Kisumu to redo the child’s birth certificate and remove the father’s name.

The judge said it was clear that the information contained in the birth certificate of April 27, 2023 about the father of the child identified as J.M.O. it was untrue and misleading.

“I allow the application dated November 16, 2023 to the extent that the applicant’s name in this F.O.A. that is in the child’s Birth Certificate Number xxx as the father of the child J.M.O will be deleted,” the judge said.

F.O.A. did not deny that he allowed his name to be used to register the child during the issuance of the birth certificate, as the child’s father as stipulated in section 12 of the Births and Deaths Registration Act.

However, the man denied that he adopted the child after conducting a secret DNA test. A second test was ordered after moving to court and was conducted by a government chemist in Kisumu who confirmed that he was not the biological father of the child.

The man said he was involved in a romantic relationship in 2014 with the child’s mother before she got pregnant.

He said the woman made him believe that he was the one responsible for the pregnancy and started caring for the mother.

After a while, he began to have doubts and stopped helping with their needs because he believed that the child wasn’t his.