Former Edo governor Adams Oshiomhole has rebuked his successor’s wife, Betsy Obaseki, as a barren woman incapable of loving children, given her unwillingness to adopt one despite being in her 60s.

Mr Oshiomhole asserted that Mrs Obaseki lacked the moral standing to judge APC candidate Monday Okpebholo for not having a wife, given her “childlessness.”

Mrs Obaseki, wife to a PDP governor, Godwin Obaseki, had previously derided APC’s Okpebholo for not having a wife to discredit him as the campaign for November gubernatorial polls intensified, according to Mr Oshiomhole.

The senator said he was shocked to hear such remarks from Mrs Obaseki.

“I was shocked yesterday to see Mrs Obaseki, the first lady, saying our (APC) candidate has no wife. She is the most…I’m sorry she had to say that because here is a woman who has no child,” Mr Oshiomhole told reporters. “Between him(sic) and Obaseki, they are childless.”

The senator further criticised the First Lady as being incapable of loving children due to her and her husband’s unwillingness to adopt children from the orphanage despite being married for many years.

Mr Oshiomhole explained that he had no qualms against people who do not have children but that couples who genuinely love children would have opted for adoption as an alternative.

“They are not even ready to adopt. I don’t blame anyone if you don’t have a child, but people who have love for children, they go to motherless homes and adopt children. They have not adopted, they are both in their sixties,” Mr Oshiomhole stressed.

“I don’t know whether it’s a contract or whatever it is, but they have no child,” he stated.

Mr Oshiomhole seized the moment to promote the APC flag bearer as a man who loved children and invested in their education.

According to him, Mr Okpebholo’s first child is a lawyer, and the second is a medical doctor.

“Now, our candidate, not only does he have children, he has invested in the education of those children such that you watch them on live television, covered by your media stations where the first one that spoke is a lawyer, the second one is a medical doctor, and they addressed the crowd in Edo South, in Edo central and the North and their mother was there,” the senator bragged.

Messrs Oshiomhole and Obaseki were previous political allies, and the former anointed the latter to succeed him in 2016.

They both fell out, and Mr Obaseki defected from APC to PDP in 2020, when he was re-elected for a second term.