The campaign organisation of Senator Sharafadeen Alli, the Oyo State governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has explained the circumstances surrounding a viral video showing a male student of The Polytechnic, Ibadan, sitting on the politician’s lap.

The video, which circulated widely on social media on Wednesday, September 2, generated mixed reactions after it showed the governorship candidate with the student seated on his lap while he briefly patted the student’s leg.

Reacting to the controversy in a statement, the campaign organisation said the incident occurred when a delegation of students from the Department of Banking and Finance at The Polytechnic, Ibadan, visited Alli at his campaign office in Mokola, Ibadan.

According to the organisation, the students were at the office to interview the candidate and invite him to an upcoming departmental programme.

The campaign team explained that the office was crowded at the time of the visit, leaving inadequate seating space for everyone. It said that, in order not to delay the interview, Senator Alli asked one of the students to sit on his lap.

The organisation described the incident as a “spontaneous and fatherly gesture,” insisting that the interaction had no inappropriate undertone or intention.

“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,” the statement said.

It added that those familiar with Senator Alli’s relationship with young people would understand the context of the interaction, stressing that there was no justification for the insinuations being attached to the video.

The campaign organisation consequently urged members of the public to disregard what it described as misleading narratives surrounding the video.

It also dismissed the backlash as “cheap political blackmail” allegedly designed to damage the candidate’s image and mislead voters ahead of the 2027 Oyo State governorship election.