By Abiola Olawale
The campaign organization of Senator Sharafadeen Alli, the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate in Oyo State, has officially responded to intense social media backlash following a viral video that captured him interacting with a male student.
The controversial footage, which circulated widely across multiple digital platforms, shows a student from The Polytechnic, Ibadan, seated on the politician’s lap during an interview, with Senator Alli briefly touching his leg.
The clip quickly triggered mixed reactions, heavy scrutiny, and online debates.
In a statement released in Ibadan, the campaign team strongly condemned what they termed “cheap political blackmail” and a deliberate misrepresentation of facts.
According to the campaign, the student, along with other members of the Department of Banking and Finance, had visited the senator’s campaign office to seek support for an upcoming departmental programme and to conduct an interview.
The campaign council said the students arrived when there were not enough seats for everyone, prompting Alli to ask one of them to sit on his lap.
The campaign organisation said the gesture was “a spontaneous and fatherly gesture” and had no inappropriate intention.
“The number of people present exceeded the available seating capacity, leaving insufficient chairs for everyone,” the statement reads.
The campaign organisation accused some online platforms of attempting to sexualise the interaction, describing their interpretations as misleading and politically motivated.
“Unfortunately, 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,” the campaign council said.
“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 council called on media organisations and social media users to be cautious when reporting the incident, describing the reactions trailing the video as “cheap political blackmail”.
