By Anietie Udobit, Abuja
The video clip lasts only a few seconds, but its ripple effects have completely upended the political landscape of Oyo State.
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In a crowded campaign office in Mokola, Ibadan, an undergraduate student reads questions from his smartphone. He isn’t sitting across a desk or on an office chair. He is perched directly on the lap of Senator Sharafadeen Alli, an APC governorship candidate. As the student speaks, the senator’s hand rests on and moves across the young man’s thigh. Then comes the verbal kicker that launched a thousand social media threads: “You have to use what you have to get what you want.”
To the senator’s critics, the footage is a stomach-churning demonstration of a predatory power dynamic—a wealthy politician physically and verbally compromising a vulnerable youth. To the senator’s defenders, it is an entirely innocent, spontaneous gesture of “fatherly accommodation” in a room suffering from a temporary shortage of chairs.
Beyond the immediate shock value, this viral incident has cracked open a much larger conversation about the transactional nature of youth leadership, ethical boundaries in public service, and the unforgiving court of public opinion in Southwestern politics.
The Narrative Divide: “Fatherly Gesture” vs. Professional Boundaries
Following the intense social media backlash, Senator Alli’s campaign organization moved quickly into damage control. They dismissed the outrage as “cheap political blackmail” engineered by opposition media cells. The official narrative paints a picture of a crowded, busy campaign hub where hospitality overrode strict protocol; rather than letting a visiting student stand, the senator offered his own lap so the interview could proceed.
Yet, public relations experts and ethicists argue that this defense ignores the foundational rules of professional boundaries and power asymmetry.
“There is an insurmountable power gap between a sitting senator and an undergraduate student,” notes an Ibadan-based political analyst. “Even if the senator’s intentions were purely innocent, the student is in no position to decline. When you look closely at the footage, the young man’s body language—his fingers curled into a tight, tense fist—tells a story of profound discomfort, not casual familiarity.”
The Loaded Language of “Using What You Have”
The controversy deepened significantly due to the specific vernacular used during the encounter. In Nigerian popular culture and colloquial speech, the phrase “use what you have to get what you want” carries heavy undertones of compromised morality, institutional gatekeeping, and “sex-for-favours.”
When paired with physical contact, the phrase transformed from a generic piece of motivational advice about resourcefulness into an optical disaster.
On local radio airwaves, from the political desks of Agidigbo 88.7 FM to grassroots Yoruba talk shows, the linguistic breakdown has been fierce. Callers are deeply divided. Older, party-aligned loyalists maintain that African cultural settings allow for such fluid, patriarchal expressions of support. Meanwhile, younger generations have flooded the phone lines, labeling the phrasing as a raw, Freudian slip that exposes how the political elite view the youth: as transactional tools to be manipulated.
The Quiet Outrage of the Student Bloc
While institutional bodies like the management of The Polytechnic, Ibadan have remained silent to avoid being dragged into a partisan crossfire, the broader student leadership structures in the state are reeling.
The incident has highlighted a humiliating systemic reality for Nigerian undergraduates. Because student associations and departmental bodies are severely underfunded, student leaders are frequently forced to visit the private offices of wealthy politicians to beg for financial sponsorships or event endorsements.
“It exposes the degradation of student advocacy,” an activist from a regional youth coalition shared on condition of anonymity. “Why must a student executive endure the indignity of sitting on a politician’s lap just to have a program funded? The fact that older aides in that room remained comfortably seated while a visiting interviewer was placed on the senator’s lap speaks volumes about how youth are valued in these spaces.”
Historical Echoes: The “Wild Wild West” and Electoral Memory
Oyo State politics—historically referred to as part of the politically volatile “Wild Wild West”—has a track record of punishing optical blunders and perceived elite arrogance.
Political historians point directly to the 2017 “Constituted Authority” crisis, where the late Governor Abiola Ajimobi spoke dismissively to protesting students of LAUTECH. That single public relations disaster completely alienated the state’s massive student voter bloc and is widely cited as the anchor that sank the APC’s popularity, leading directly to the PDP’s gubernatorial victory in 2019.
While Senator Alli’s national party headquarters in Abuja has maintained a strategic public silence, letting the local state chapter absorb the blow, internal party rivals are reportedly watching the fallout closely. In a state where electoral victories rely heavily on appearing relatable and grounded to the ordinary person, a viral clip of this nature is a potent weapon.
The Verdict in the Court of Public Opinion
As the initial shock of the video transitions into structured political debate, the ultimate impact of the incident remains to be seen. Senator Alli’s team is actively pushing to pivot the public conversation back to “ideas, competence, and development.”
However, in the digital age, viral optics possess a permanent shelf life. Whether framed as a misunderstood fatherly act or a textbook abuse of power, the image of the lap-bound interview has already been archived by opposition strategists. As the road to the next election cycle begins to take shape, this single incident serves as a stark reminder that in modern political warfare, a lapse in visual decorum can cost far more than a seat at the table.
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