Oyo APC Clarifies Viral Video of Candidate with Ibadan Poly Student on Lap

The campaign organization for Senator Sharafadeen Alli, who is the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship flagbearer for Oyo State, has addressed public concerns regarding a widely circulated video. The video, which emerged online on Wednesday, September 2, featured a male student from The Polytechnic, Ibadan, sitting on the Senator’s lap. This footage generated diverse opinions across various social media platforms, showing the governorship hopeful briefly patting the individual's leg.

In an official press release responding to the incident, Senator Alli’s campaign team explained that a group of students from the institution's Department of Banking and Finance had paid a visit to his campaign office in Mokola, Ibadan. Their purpose was to conduct an interview with Alli and extend an invitation to an upcoming departmental event. The campaign organization clarified that upon the students' arrival, the office was quite crowded, leading to limited available chairs for everyone present.

To ensure the interview could proceed without unnecessary delays, Senator Alli reportedly invited one of the students to sit on his lap. The organization labeled the candidate's conduct as a "spontaneous and fatherly gesture," emphatically stating the absence of any improper intentions or undertones behind the act. The statement further read: “It is deeply unfortunate that political desperation has descended to this level, where an ordinary interaction between a fatherly political leader and students who came to seek support for their programme is deliberately twisted into something sordid. Those who know Senator Sharafadeen Alli understand his disposition towards young people and his fatherly relationship with them. There is no basis whatsoever for the offensive insinuations being attached to this video.”

The campaign team subsequently urged members of the public to ignore the narratives circulating online about the video. They described the criticism as "cheap political blackmail" intended to mislead the electorate.