Fact-Check: Are Nigerian Women the Most Unfaithful Wives in the World

Fact-Check: Are Nigerian Women the Most Unfaithful Wives in the World

Claim: A trending video on social media, especially on Whatsapp groups claims that Nigerian women are the most unfaithful in the world.

Full Text: The claim which has since gone viral across platforms, was accompanied by the following text: 

“Durex, the famous condom maker, did a survey that turned the spotlight on infidelity. They talked to a whopping 29,000 people from 36 different countries, and what they found was pretty surprising.

“Hold on to your seats: Nigerian women took the crown, with a staggering 62% admitting to being unfaithful. But that’s not all – Thailand was right behind them, with 59% of women confessing to cheating. 

“South Korea came in at 34%, and Malaysia wasn’t far behind at 33%, where an astonishing 39% of Malaysian women also admitted to infidelity. Russian women owned up to it at 33%, while Singaporeans seemed to be the most faithful, with only 19% confessing to cheating.”

Verification: To determine the source of this claim attributed to Durex survey, PRNigeria fact check team ran a keyword search on the internet. It turned out that several reputable news platforms and online blogs have feasted on the narrative. 

The record 15 times winner of the Best Television Station of the year, Channels TV seems to originally reported “Nigerian Women are Most Unfaithful in the World-Durex in July 2012, followed by top-ranking online news platform Legit reported the same in 2014, while leading Nigerian Newspaper, Vanguard also reported the same in January 2015 with a caption: Nigerian women most unfaithful wives in the world with a picture of a group of prostitutes in the body of the story.

Surprisingly, another Nigerian National Daily, Independent Newspaper reported the same story in 2021 making a similar reference to the ‘Durex Survey.’ 

The pattern of search engine results revealed that while the original report was first published in 2012, more than ten years ago, other subsequent reports merely reported the same including GhanaWeb with a video in 2023. 

However, it appeared that while Nigerian media celebrated the survey, no credible international media published it.

Some foreign platforms that published the report have dropped it. For instance, a report titled “What nationalities are the most unfaithful – Durex?” on a webpage of the Wei Research Group in the Department of Chemistry University of Florida could not be found. It returns the “404 Not Found” status when clicked. 

When the websites of the Condom and lubricant Brand Durex in Nigeria and the Headquarters in the United Kingdom were visited and the toggled keywords, “Nigeria”, “Nigeria Unfaithful,” and “Unfaithful Wives,” among others were entered in the search bar, there was no related result. 

Meanwhile, either way, one searches online using toggled keywords, such as “Nigerian woman faithful”, or “Nigerian wives faithful,” results only lead to “Nigerian Women Most Unfaithful,” as reported in the Nigerian media. 

Since we could not discover the survey on the website of Durex including  www.durexme.com/, a search on ‘infidelity’ and ‘unfaithful nation’ led us to  STATISTA the respected portal on data and statistics with a published survey in 2017 on the “Most Unfaithful nationalities” where countries were ranked. Using the percentage of married adults who have admitted having an affair,  Thailand ranked first at 51%, followed by Denmark at 46%, Italy 45%, France 43%, Norway 41%, Belgium 40%, Spain 39%, United Kingdom 36% and Finland 36%. Nigeria was NOT listed or mentioned.

The World Population Review reconfirms the survey in its 2023 Infidelity Rates by Country 2023 and Nigeria was not on the list.

Finding the Original Source

A deeper dive into finding the source using Google Power search led PRNigeria Fact Checkers to the 2011–12 Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey which was carried out in 37 countries. The sampling of the respondents was conducted by Harris Interactive via a web-based panel system in 36 of 37 countries. In the 37th country, Nigeria, data was collected using face-to-face interviews.

The report was titled:  “THE FACE OF GLOBAL SEX 2012: Fırst Sex, Using a Condom and its impact on future sexual behavior.”

The participants of the survey, were adults aged 18-64 in 37 countries who provided information about the circumstances of their first experience with sexual intercourse, whether they used contraception or not. 

The survey was conducted to raise public awareness regarding unsafe sexual behaviors; Highlighting the value of condom use as a public health measure and Encouraging public policy debate.

Only Nigeria and South Africa from the African continent were sampled in the survey. The table shows that 500 respondents in Nigeria were contacted with 1.7% and 62.8 cumulative. The frequency for South Africa was 504 at 1.7% with a cumulative 76.4. 

See the table for other countries:

It was this survey that was misrepresented and mischievously misinterpreted for sensationalism by mainstream and online media on Nigerian women. 

Conclusion: Findings by PRNigeria Fact checkers reveal that the only globally existing survey on infidelity among married couples in countries of the world as reported by Statista and World Population Review did not mention Nigeria. However, a 2011/12 Durex Sexual Wellbeing Global Survey which was carried out in 37 countries to highlight the value of condom use as a public health measure was misrepresented in Nigerian mainstream and online media as a ‘fictitious and imaginary survey on infidelity. 

PRNigeria therefore concludes that the media narrative making the rounds on mainstream, online, and social media claiming that Nigerian women are the most unfaithful in the world has no research backing, is a misrepresentation of a survey on the value of condom use, and is therefore FALSE. 

By PRNigeria