Adekunle Gold opens up about checking Simi’s genotype before dating her, sparking a fresh conversation on sickle cell and genotype compatibility in Nigeria.
Adekunle Gold just admitted that before anything romantic happened with Simi, he needed one thing sorted first: her genotype. Not her favourite colour. Not whether she liked Highlife or Afrobeats. Her genotype.
He said it plainly on the One54 Africa podcast. Simi is AA, and honestly, that’s the whole reason things moved forward the way they did. If she hadn’t been compatible with him, he’s saying he wouldn’t have pursued her at all. No hard feelings, just facts.
Why does this matter so much? Because Adekunle Gold has lived with sickle cell his whole life. This isn’t a stranger giving unsolicited advice. This is a man who actually knows what the condition costs a person, physically and emotionally. So when he talks about it, it hits different.
And he didn’t stop at his own love story. He went further, saying people need to be way more serious about this whole genotype conversation. His words: “if you have sickle cell, forget love, you can’t do it.” Blunt? Definitely. But that’s kind of his whole point, love feels like it should conquer everything, until you’re the one raising a child in constant pain.
Here’s the part that makes this bigger than just celebrity gossip. Nigeria has the highest number of babies born with sickle cell anaemia in the world. Doctors have been begging couples for years to check compatibility before things get serious. Yet people still fall in love, ignore the results, and hope for the best. It happens more than you’d think.
So when someone as public as Adekunle Gold says he put genotype checks ahead of feelings, it lands differently. It’s not just a celebrity flex or a random podcast soundbite. It’s a nudge, maybe even a challenge, to people who’ve been avoiding that conversation with their own partners.
Unsurprisingly, the internet has mostly sided with him. A lot of people are calling it brave, saying more public figures should speak this openly instead of tiptoeing around it.
At the end of the day, this wasn’t really about Simi or their marriage. It was about the child that could exist because of a decision made years ago. And maybe that’s the real gist here, sometimes the most loving thing you can do is check the science before you check your heart.
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