I have watched with some concern a short video circulating on social media involving Senator Sharafadeen Alli, the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Oyo State.
Ordinarily, I would have considered the clip one of those fleeting social-media moments that should be allowed to disappear as quickly as they emerge.
But when an innocent and spontaneous act of kindness is deliberately stripped of its context and presented as something entirely different, silence can sometimes allow mischief to harden into an accepted narrative. It is important to then set the record straight.
The young man seen sitting briefly on Senator Alli’s lap is not a journalist conducting an interview, as has been suggested in some quarters. He is a student of The Polytechnic, Ibadan, and a member of the executive committee of the Banking and Finance Department of the institution.
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He was part of a delegation of students—young men and women—who had paid Senator Alli a courtesy visit. As I understand what transpired, members of the delegation had taken their seats when it became apparent that there was no vacant chair for the young man. He was left standing.It was at that point that Senator Alli, apparently uncomfortable with having a young visitor standing while others were seated, spontaneously asked him to sit on his lap.
There was no elaborate calculation behind it. No script. No political choreography. It was simply an instinctive act of kindness and empathy towards a young visitor.
Unfortunately, a brief recording of that moment found its way onto social media without the context surrounding it. Predictably, the interpretations began.
The student suddenly became a “journalist”. A courtesy visit became an “interview”. An innocent gesture was given all manner of meanings, including the outrageous suggestion that Senator Alli was “caressing” the young man. If Senator Sharafadeen Alli has a sinister motive, he would then be showing that publicly, Common on. Maybe the interview so conducted would soon be published.
Nothing could be further from what actually happened. I find the episode instructive because it says something rather disturbing about the direction of our political discourse.
I have been around politics and politicians long enough to know that public office comes with scrutiny. Anyone seeking or holding public office must expect his words, actions and conduct to be examined. That is an important part of democracy. But scrutiny should not mean abandoning fairness. As a journalist, what we are taught is fairness and balance. Hear the other side.
Criticism should not require us to manufacture facts, alter the identity of individuals involved in an incident or deliberately remove the circumstances necessary for people to understand what actually happened. There should still be room for humanity in politics.
Anyone who has interacted closely with politicians at the grassroots will understand that some encounters are completely unscripted. People shake hands, embrace, laugh, exchange jokes and sometimes behave in ways that reflect the informality of the moment rather than the stiffness normally associated with public office. This was one of those moments.
Indeed, what struck me most about the incident was not politics but empathy. A young man was standing because there was nowhere for him to sit. An older man saw the situation and, without ceremony, offered what was immediately available. His lap.
Some may say they would have handled the situation differently. That is perfectly legitimate. But it is quite another thing to convert an unconventional but harmless gesture into something sinister simply because politics provides an excuse to do so. We should also be careful about the kind of political culture we are creating.
If every handshake must be interrogated, every embrace weaponised, every joke interpreted maliciously and every spontaneous gesture subjected to partisan distortion, politicians may eventually learn to become distant and mechanical in their interactions with ordinary citizens. That would be unfortunate.
Our politics already suffers from too much bitterness. We should not add the criminalisation of ordinary human kindness to it.
There will be many serious issues on which Senator Sharafadeen Alli and other candidates seeking the mandate of the people of Oyo State should be interrogated. Their programmes, competence, experience, character, vision and capacity to govern are legitimate subjects for robust political debate. Let the contest be fought on those grounds.
But we diminish the quality of our politics when a few seconds of video, detached from everything that happened before it, becomes an opportunity to manufacture scandal.
For the avoidance of doubt, the young man was a student visiting with his colleagues. He had nowhere to sit. Senator Alli spontaneously offered him his lap rather than leave him standing.That was the beginning and end of the matter. Perhaps there is a wider lesson here for all of us.
We live in an age in which a camera can capture a few seconds but not necessarily the truth of the moment. A video may show us what happened without explaining why it happened. And when politics, partisanship and social media collide, that missing context can easily become fertile ground for mischief.
Sometimes, there is no hidden meaning. Sometimes, empathy is simply empathy. And sometimes, a spontaneous act of kindness is just that—kindness.
