Paternity row: Three DNA tests proved that Davido is not Anu’s father —Dr. Adedeji Adeleke

Adedeji Adeleke, business magnate, elder brother of Governor Ademola Adeleke of Osun State and father of musician, Davido, recently addressed a press conference in Lagos over a paternity row involving his son, Davido. TAOHEED ADEGBITE and TOLUWANIMI ADENIJI, who were there, present excerpts from the entrepreneur’s interaction with newsmen.

You’re known to be a businessman who likes to keep a low profile and rarely talks to the media. What has changed?

The reason why I called this press conference is for us to say our side of the story regarding this little girl in Ibadan, Anu. I’m not even sure if it’s legal for someone to impersonate a minor. There is this Kemi Olunloyo who has been after my son David for many years. Everything she says about David is always negative, trying to put him in a bad light.

Let me put it on record that I have 14 grandchildren, so what will one more do? Is it that I will not be able to afford to do things for her or bring her into my family? But there is science. DNA. If you say you are my granddaughter, and science has proven that you are my granddaughter, I would gladly accept her.

This is how it started. I received a letter in 2014, through DHL, from a lawyer in Ibadan, alleging that my son, David, got somebody pregnant and abandoned the person with the child.

And in that DHL package was this letter from the grandmother of Anu with her telephone number: ‘Dear Sir, I know you and your family are in good health. And your work is going well; because the Lord has been good to you. So I do not expect otherwise. Sir, I’m a widow with two daughters. I lost my husband 30 years ago, and I’ve single-handedly raised both of them with the help of God. But still I’ve been very challenged. Early last year, my eldest daughter, Ayotomide, informed me that your son, David Adeleke, was responsible for her pregnancy. They had met when your son came to Ibadan for a show. I sat with her as a mother to ask her about the father of the child, and she has confided in me so many times that your son is indeed the father of her child. She put to bed on November 19, 2013, and gave birth to a baby girl. So, I’m not trying in any way to extort you, but to ask that your son step up for a paternity test to confirm and take full responsibility for his daughter. I’m also not asking your son to marry her at all. Contained in this envelope are pictures of the baby and my daughter. I know you’re a God-fearing man, and I plead with you for the sake of the pain that the widow goes through to raise her children, that you give me a quick and favourable response. Thank you’.

And in that DHL package, curiously, there was a birth certificate of the child. And what caught my attention was that in the record of the birth certificate, it said full name of father: Adeleke David, the full name of mother: Adeleke Ayotomide. How can she be Adeleke?

Immediately I saw this letter, even before calling David, I called this woman and I said, ‘Look, I’ve not spoken to my son yet but I’m going to speak to him. But I’ll suggest to you to give me your address in Ibadan. I’ll send my driver to come and know where you live but I can assure you that if this girl is my granddaughter, you have no problems with me, I’ll welcome her into my family happily’. She was happy. She gave me her address and I gave the address to my driver.

I told her about the hospital that I use in Lekki. It is an Indian hospital. That’s where I do my checkups and everything. And that I can ask the hospital to arrange for a DNA test. But I went to the hospital myself. They told me that they don’t actually do DNA test in-house but there’s a clinic they partner with, which would take samples that would be sent to South Africa for analysis.

And I called her, gave her the information that anytime they were ready, I would send my driver to pick her up from Ibadan. So, on the appointed day, I sent my driver to Ibadan. Very early, my driver brought the mother of the child, the grandmother and the baby. The three of them came. And because my driver knows Vedic Hospital, they were already there before I came in with David, and Lati, his aide, arrived and we went upstairs.

So, we were all in the same room and the doctor told us the procedure. I had read on social media that they were drawing blood. It was not done by blood. It was from saliva. They swabbed the baby and put the specimen in a container and sealed it. They did the same for David.

The doctor told us that the samples would be sent to South Africa for analysis. And when it was ready, myself and the grandmother of the baby signed and agreed that both of us would be the ones to receive the result.

When the result was ready, we went and they opened the result before both of us. At the end of the whole story, they wrote there that the probability of paternity was 0.000 percent. The mum asked the lab what this meant. They told her that it meant David was not the father of the baby. The grandmother was disappointed. She broke down and cried.

She was disappointed and was crying because the result was not what she expected. And I told her, ‘Look, people can make mistakes. Maybe they made a mistake in the lab. Maybe there’s something. What I would suggest to you is let us do two more tests. I would advise that you please stay in Lagos for one week. I’ll pay for your hotel. Since the baby is here, the mum is here. The three of you should stay and find two more reputable places so that we can go there and do it’.

So, I gave some money to my driver to book the hotel and make sure they were comfortable, and to give them some money to keep. I came back home with the result. David was not there. I called him, ‘The result is out. The result says you are not the father of the child’. He said, ‘Daddy, I told you I’ve never seen this girl before’. But I told him that was not the end of the story, because I had asked the mum to stay so that we could do at least two confirmatory tests. He said, ‘Okay, fine’. I told him, ‘Let me know when you are going to be back in Nigeria so that we’ll be able to fix it. But the mum and daughter are in Lagos. So if they are ready to do it, you have to come back immediately so that we can do two confirmatory tests’.

Around 7 p.m. that day, my driver called me and said he was calling from Ibadan. ‘What are you doing in Ibadan?’ He said the grandmother got upset and was saying all kinds of things to the daughter; that she was very upset and said that she wanted to go back to Ibadan. She didn’t want to stay in Lagos anymore; she was no longer interested in anything. He (driver) said that was why he took them to Ibadan, and I didn’t hear anything from her anymore.

READ ALSO: VIDEO: Davido’s father breaks silence on paternity allegations against son

Okay. What I’m about to read to you is what I received from the sister to Anu’s mum who lives in Abuja. I’m not going to mention her name, but she’s in communication with me. When this happened, she was the first…, because, you know, I’m not on social media. She saw the thing that was supposedly written by her niece (Anu). And then she sent this to me. She said, ‘Good afternoon, sir. I hope your day is going well. I just saw this on a blog post. I just wanted to clarify that the account is not run by me, Ayo, or my mom. The account is run by Kemi Olunloyo who we have cut ties with years ago. I really do not know why she keeps posting these things, knowing full well that we are no longer in communication. We have reached out to her several times to stop posting anything about Anu. I’m sorry if this embarrasses your family in any way.’ And, the minute I saw this, I called David. I said, ‘David, have you seen anything on social media?’ He said a lot of things; that this woman has started again. And I’ve always told David to ignore this woman.

Yes, after she left Lagos, she went to meet the Ooni of Ife and subsequently the monarch of my hometown, the Timi of Ede, to prevail on me to accept the child. She was saying that the little girl is light-skinned, and we have light-skinned people in our family, so why are we doing DNA tests? But I insisted that I’m going to rely on science. So, we left everything. That was 2014.

Thereafter, we started getting things from Kemi Olunloyo. She took over their case and started saying all kinds of things on social media, all kinds of lies. And I told David, ‘Don’t pay her any attention. Just let her’.

In late 2020, I received a call, when the COVID thing was easy, from the girl’s aunt, the youngest sister of the mum, who lives in Abuja. She said, ‘Sir, please, I know you asked my mom to do this confirmatory test. Is it possible that we do the test now?’ I said, ‘Yes, we can still do it anytime. If this baby is my granddaughter, I want her’. She said okay.

But before then, some other people on social media also alleged that maybe it’s not David; maybe it’s my nephew called B-Red, because B-Red’s name is Adebayo, but his middle name is also David. It’s Adebayo David Adeleke.

So, when the aunt of the little girl called, I said, ‘Look, this is what we are going to do. You go and pick a clinic of your choice. Come to Lagos. I’ll make sure David is available. Bring the little girl. We’ll go to your own clinic and do it’. I said, ‘But before we do that, I’m going to arrange for another clinic in Lekki, apart from the Vedic Hospital we visited before, so that David and that little girl will do two more tests. And then I’ll arrange two clinics for my nephew, Bayo, to do two tests. I said, so, the day you are going to come, we are going to have four different tests’.

So, the girl came, and I didn’t follow them. They went to the first clinic in Lekki here. From Lekki, they went to two other clinics in VI for Bayo and the girl to get their swabs. And then, the clinic that the girl’s family arranged was in Ilupeju. They went to Ilupeju the same day and submitted their samples.

 And the clinic said they were going to send their results electronically to the mum and to David’s lawyer: a copy to them, a copy to us. When the result came, it was still 0.00. The grandmother said, ‘Oh, no, no, no. We have gone to give them money to bribe them to manipulate the result’. So, we’ve done about five DNA tests. Actually, three were done by David, two by Bayo.

What has been done to help the family?

Yes, the auntie called me; that she needed my help. But she was not asking me for help for the little girl as a family member, but she knew that I help a lot of people to go to school. I have a foundation called the Springtime Foundation. We don’t make any noise about it. But at any point in time, I have about 3,000 students in universities in Nigeria that I send to school. So, I said, ‘Okay, what do you want me to do?’ She said she could not afford to continue to pay for her (Anu); if I could help her out. I said, ‘Fine. How much is her school fees?’ She told me. I sent her a little more than that because she needed to buy a computer and things. I sent the money to her.

Like I said, this lady, I’ve never met her before. We’ve been talking on the phone. I’ve never met her in person, but, like I said, very responsible, very kind, very nice. And I was impressed with her. Even up to now, I’ve not met her. So, I said, look, I’d be sending you X amount of money every month for Anu’s upkeep.

After about two or three months, I called the girl’s aunt. I said, ‘Helping your niece is fine. But to be better, you are a graduate and just two of you in your family from your mom, why didn’t your sister go to school?’  She said, ‘Well, she dropped out. She was pregnant’. ‘Does she still want to go to school? Because the help I can do for her that can help Anu is for her mum to make something of herself, get a degree, get a job, and take care of her child’.

She said, ‘Sir, if you can do that…’ I said, ‘I’ll do it. I have a school, Adeleke University. If she’s willing to come, I will enroll her in the school. We have a programme for mature students, we call them mature students; people that are already married before coming to school. We do a work-study programme where they earn N50,000 every month while they are in school.’ I said I was going to enroll her in that programme. Although she would be in the dormitory, these other ones live outside campus because they are married before. I would allow her to be in the dormitory, be in that work-study programme, and earn N50,000 a month for herself.

She came to Adeleke University. We didn’t announce it to anybody. While Kemi Olunloyo was abusing us every year, the girl was in our school until she left. She did 100 level, 200 level. She had good grades. She was studying English. Then she left, I think in 2023, because her mother was upset. Kemi Olunloyo started her attacks again.

But one interesting thing is this: after she left school, since 2023, from the records in our bursary, the school kept paying that N50,000 to her account because they forgot to stop the salary. Up till October last year, 2025, the money was still being paid to her. That is not even an issue, but I just want people to know that. I told the sister that the scholarship is still open. She can come and complete her degree even bring her  and daugher who has finished primary school to Adeleke High School so that mother and child can be in the same environment.