Akpabio mocks Oshiomhole | Senate President Godswill Akpabio openly teased Senator Adams Oshiomhole during Thursday’s plenary session, and he did so over the viral video that allegedly shows the Edo North lawmaker massaging a woman’s leg aboard a private jet. Consequently, laughter filled the chamber as Akpabio revisited a controversy that has trailed Oshiomhole since February.

While addressing petitions before the Senate, Akpabio suddenly turned his attention to the clip that once dominated Nigerian social media. “I don’t want to go outside of what we are doing,” he said, before adding a pointed jab. “I would have asked a question when there was a picture showing one of our senators in a plane, massaging the leg of a girl.”

Senate president Akpabio Mocks Oshiomhole Over Viral Video Of Massaging Woman’s Leg pic.twitter.com/jxOxWo2LdW

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Furthermore, Akpabio explained that lawmakers initially brushed the footage aside because they suspected it had been generated using artificial intelligence. According to him, Senator Simon Lalong had personally urged him not to attach any significance to the video when it first surfaced. “Senator Oshiomhole and that your very good friend came to give me security information that we just ignored the massage because we thought it was AI,” Akpabio told the chamber, drawing further laughter from his colleagues.

Still, the Senate President left the door open for a fresh probe. He clarified that lawmakers could revisit the matter if credible proof emerges. “But if you have another evidence, we have a petition before us, we can look into it if it’s not AI,” he said.

Meanwhile, the video at the center of the banter first surfaced on X in February and quickly spread across Nigerian social media platforms. It appeared to show a man resembling Oshiomhole seated inside a private jet while a woman rested her legs on his lap. As a result, Nigerians debated the clip’s authenticity for days, and many also criticized the optics of the scene, especially given the country’s tough economic climate.

In response, Oshiomhole’s media aide, Oseni Momodu, firmly denied that the senator appeared in the footage. He described the clip as a poorly crafted and fabricated video that was designed to blackmail and embarrass his principal. “This antics, devised and manipulated by content creators in quest for online clicks and views… is not only novel to our media space, but increasingly creating nuisance against Nigerians,” Momodu said in a statement issued shortly after the video went viral.

Additionally, Momodu urged Nigerians to verify online content before drawing conclusions about public figures. He also called on relevant authorities to tighten regulation around the use of artificial intelligence tools, warning that such technology could easily be misused for misinformation and reputational attacks.

However, a separate fact-check conducted by another Nigerian outlet challenged that AI defense. Investigators ran the clip through several deepfake detection tools, including Deepware Scanner and Hive AI Deepfake Detection, and the scans reportedly found no hallmarks of artificial generation. Instead, the results pointed to authentic footage rather than a synthetically created video.

Social media users had also weighed in heavily when the clip first broke, with many misidentifying the woman in the video as Oshiomhole’s wife, Lara Fortes. Later, however, reports identified her as Leshaan Dagama, a South African lifestyle influencer. When Nigerians flooded her Instagram page with angry reactions, she did not deny appearing in the video and instead urged critics to direct their grievances at Oshiomhole.

Ultimately, Akpabio’s light-hearted jab on Thursday brought the months-old controversy back into public view, and it reminded lawmakers that the matter remains unresolved. For now, the Senate has yet to receive any new petition or evidence that would compel it to reopen an investigation into the viral footage.

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