Oyo APC Guber Candidate Explains Why Male Student Sat On His Lap

The campaign organisation of Sharafadeen Alli, the  All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate in Oyo State, has reacted a video showing a male student sitting on the politician’s lap.

The video, which has generated reactions online, was recorded at Alli’s campaign office in Mokola, Ibadan.

It shows the student sitting on Sharafadeen Alli’s lap while the politician appeared to touch his thigh.

The incident happened when students from the Department of Banking and Finance at The Polytechnic, Ibadan, visited Alli to invite him to their programme and conduct an interview with him.

In a statement on Wednesday, Alli’s campaign organisation said the students arrived when there were not enough chairs to accommodate everyoneand and Alli asked one of the students to sit on his lap.

The campaign team described the action as a spontaneous and fatherly gesture, insisting that there was nothing inappropriate about the interaction.

“The number of people present exceeded the available seating capacity, leaving insufficient chairs for everyone,” the statement reads.

ALli’s campaign team accused some social media platforms of deliberately giving the encounter a sexual meaning for political reasons.

“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,” it 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 organisation described the reactions to the video as politically motivated and urged media outlets and social media users to be careful when discussing the incident.

The campaign team described the controversy as an attempt at political blackmail and maintained that the viral video did not show any inappropriate behaviour.

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