Two proud British Nigerian parents gave birth to a white baby. Yes, a blond hair, blue eyed child. The stunned black dad of a newborn, white baby girl declared, “I’m sure she’s my kid. I just don’t know why she’s blonde.”
Nmachi Ihegboro, whose name means “Beauty of God” in the Nigerian couple’s homeland, has baffled genetics experts because neither Ben nor his wife Angela has any mixed-race family history. The pale genes skipping generations before cropping up again could explain the baby’s appearance.
Ben also stressed, “My wife is true to me. Even if she hadn’t been, the baby still wouldn’t look like that. We both just sat there after the birth staring at her for ages – not saying anything.”
Doctors at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup – where Angela, from nearby Woolwich, gave birth – told the parents Nmachi is definitely no albino.
Ben said, “She doesn’t look like an albino child anyway – not like the ones I’ve seen back in Nigeria or in books. She just looks like a healthy white baby. But we don’t know of any white ancestry. We wondered if it was a genetic twist. But even then, what is with the long curly blonde hair?”
Professor Bryan Sykes, head of Human Genetics at Oxford University and Britain’s leading expert, called the birth extraordinary. He said, “In mixed race humans, the lighter variant of skin tone may come out in a child – and this can sometimes be startlingly different to the skin of the parents … This might be the case where there is a lot of genetic mixing, as in Afro-Caribbean populations. But in Nigeria there is little mixing.”
Sykes said both parents would’ve needed “some form of white ancestry” for a pale version of their genes to be passed on, but he added, “The hair is extremely unusual. Even many blonde children don’t have blonde hair like this at birth.”
The expert said some unknown mutation was likely the explanation.
He admitted, “The rules of genetics are complex and we still don’t understand what happens in many cases.”
What do you think? Should the parents get a DNA test?
