Your name, Robert Boroffice sounds Portuguese, how did you come by it?
BorofficeBoroffice is an anglicised Yoruba name just as we have some people like Kamoru, they change it to Kamson. There was a trend when people wanted to bear English names. The fact is that my great grandfather was born without hair in his head, they called him Olori Boro and eventually it was shortened as Boro. The family grew very large and while some went into selling of planks, others were working in government offices. My own father came from the line of the large family that worked in the office and when he got to school and said he was Boro, they asked him, ‘which Boro is your own?’ he said ‘Boro office,’ and since then, his name became Boroffice. And we in the academics don’t like changing names anyhow because the name has appeared in publications and internationally, that is the name you are known with. I like it because it is unique; it makes me very careful and also my children because it’s only my own lineage that answers that name and we are very careful to protect it. If Boroffice does anything anywhere in the world, it’s my family, even my half brothers have changed their name to our father’s name which is Omololu.
I am sure that others have also asked you same question and why you dress in white?
Of course, people ask very interesting questions; they ask about my name; they ask about my dressing, why I dress in white always and I do tell them the reason.
May be because you are a member of Ogboni?
But could anyone with purity of heart suddenly dump the party that won him election together with those who made it possible? How do you want to justify that?
In fact, the purity in heart may be the driving force. Because if you find it difficult to compromise or dwell in fraud and insincerity, and you want to remain pure in heart, then you have to leave because the Bible says you are in the world but you are not of the world. You must not conform to the world, so if you are in a position where you can not conform to what is happening, the best thing for you is to leave that place and go to where you can have the peace of the mind and where you can exercise your Christian principles.
But you were seen as a jolly fellow in Labour Party and seen as a close person to Governor Segun Mimiko.
Well, that is what it is supposed to be. I was not part of the foundation members of the Labour Party even though I was financially involved at the critical stages. But it is the Akoko Obas in particular that asked me to go into politics to protect their interest as the Asiwaju of Akokoland and I did consultations extensively on that. And based on the consultations and interactions, I finally joined the LP but unfortunately, I didn’t know that the governor had his own candidate who is a colleague of mine from Akoko. In fact, some people told me to step down, that I should not waste my resources because the other fellow aspirant was living in the government chalet, was travelling around with the governor and was enjoying government patronage in form of contracts and he was announcing it around that he was government candidate; so people felt I should step down so that I won’t waste my money. But I had faith in God and I continued and on a particular day, something strange happened and the result was that I was given the ticket without too much problem and the other colleague of mine was asked to go to the House of Representatives which I appreciated. Of course, we won the election and we defeated both the ACN and the PDP.
So when did the story change?
Things were turning sour and I believed that the governor who was the leader of the party in the state should carry along those of us representing the party at the national level. I will just give you two instances; when the governor organised a stakeholders meeting in Akure and I came all the way from Abuja to attend the meeting and after the meeting, I decided to pay a courtesy call on the governor at home before travelling back to Abuja. On getting to the gate of Government House, the chief security officer said I could not go in. I was very surprised and the man who was with me asked the security man whether he was aware that he was addressing a senator but the man retorted that it was his constituency and whatever he said was final. I then decided to see the deputy governor instead and it was then that the director of SSS called me that I should come to the Government House and I said for what? In the first instance, I wasn’t allowed in because it was not my own constituency. So, I was finally persuaded by the director and I went there. It was just me, the director of SSS and the governor, they said they heard what happened to me at the gate and I insisted that they invite the young man to come and apologise for embarrassing me so that I would know that he was not acting on instruction from the governor. And when they were not prepared to do that, I left. Then at another occasion, they were to fill some vacancies at the local government for interim administration and I supported a lady and when we were trying to discuss the issue at a stakeholders meeting, one of the young men who happened to be my brother responded to my presentation and said you are a liar. He was abusing me publicly and having interacted with Governor Mimiko before, I knew his style. He would ask someone to abuse and challenge you and he will publicly pretend that what the person did was wrong. And since I knew his style, I knew that such thing emanated from the governor. Then the governor became inaccessible, I could not get across to him. There are two constituencies from my local government and when he wanted to appoint commissioners, he picked the two commissioners from Constituency 2 which I described as very unfair and I told the governor. Then the chairman of the party, Dr Olaiya Oni, resigned and because I was very close to him, they felt that I was also gone. In fact, this happened while I was in Russia and when they called, I said I was still a member of the party but they didn’t believe. The governor started suspecting that I wanted to challenge him for the 2012 election and I tried to explain to him that was not the case but the antagonism continued. Then the exit of Olaiya Oni who was the chairman, then the vice chairman and many people led to the factionalisation of the party. When I was no longer welcome from the way the governor was behaving, coupled with the factionalisation, I left.
Are you in a way saying that the governor was forced to support you even though he had his own candidate?
I will say yes because those who were part of the game then but who are no longer members of the LP are coming to tell me now what happened even though I suspected then. They said they were instructed to do anything to support the other candidate but I had a very good grassroots support and with such a support, the fear was that if I was denied, I would go to the ACN and win, they didn’t have a choice.
So you betrayed the governor in a way then?
Well, that is political. Let’s face the fact, who betrayed whom? Our governor is the chief betrayer; he betrayed Ajasin, he betrayed Adefarati, he betrayed Obasanjo and he betrayed Agagu. So what is betrayal? I didn’t betray him, he didn’t fund my election even though he was saying it everywhere that he did. Instead, I supported him financially when he was contesting election and when he was in court. It was in appreciation of that that he appointed my cousin as commissioner for education. He asked my wife to be and I said no, my wife could not be commissioner because I rated my wife higher than myself in terms of image and I didn’t want anyone to rubbish her. He said I should nominate another person and I chose my cousin who was in the cabinet for one and a half years. Mimiko in his heart knows I didn’t betray him. For the first time, I am opening up on this because I don’t believe I should wash the dirty linen in the open. I respect him as a friend and as a Christian but since you raised the issue and I guess that is the opinion of the people in the press, which is not correct at all, I didn’t betray Mimiko. I left when I was no longer welcome.
But some people saw your move as that of someone who is desperate to be governor at all cost.
I am a child of God; it is God that promotes. God made us into whatever we have to fulfil a purpose. If I was desperate to be a governor, when I was not picked by ACN, there was so much pressure on me to come to other parties that I won’t mention. And I was assured by my followers that if I moved, I would win. I wasn’t desperate to be governor at all cost. What if you got the ticket and half way you die? At times, we human beings don’t wait for God to lead us.
No doubt you were so shocked when the ACN didn’t pick you as governorship candidate and people still believe that the move was very wrong, do you agree?
Of course, I am a human being; I participated in the exercise but as a loyal party individual, I had to abide by the decision of our leaders and that is the important thing. Whether I would have won the election, that is part of history and my political experience as an individual and the party in general. I am sure the party from what I know must have done a lot of research and review and faced reality and I am sure this will guide them in future. I wasn’t bitter, I remained loyal even when some other parties wanted to use the opportunity to poach me, I refused. I was under intense pressure to defect from the ACN but I said come off it, how could I belong to three political parties in one year. I have my honour and my integrity to protect even when I was threatened to vacate my seat in the Senate, I was resolute. In fact, some people wanted me to go back to LP to resolve the matter but all those who went back, where are they today? I believe that as a man, I was fully aware of my action and I stood by it and I am glad I did.
But INEC denied your claim that the LP was factionalised.
Yes, that was again political because later, we knew what happened for that letter to come out of INEC but the important thing was that God was on my side and is still on my side. I appreciate the understanding of the Senate president who was under intense pressure to move against me.
But people still believe that you acted as a spoiler for Dr. Olu Agunloye’s aspiration as fellow Akoko sons with your move
I don’t own ACN, Agunloye does not own ACN, we have leaders and the leaders make decisions for the party. And for your information, I was invited to ACN by the leader of the party, so I didn’t go there to spoil anything for Agunloye. Again, I also competed for the ticket like Olu Agunloye too and the ticket could have gone to either of us. It’s not a spoiler game; I was invited by leaders of ACN when they knew what I was going through in LP.
The Mimiko camp described you as a political neophyte for doing that, do you agree?
A political neophyte wouldn’t have navigated the slippery political terrain and still be standing today. People forget that we play politics at the university level though it is a miniaturised type. That is why today if you go to the National Assembly, you find people there are former student union leaders and activists. We play politics even at the staff level; I was secretary of congregation at the University of Ibadan and I became chairman of business committee of the university senate, it was real politics. It’s not that one had not been in the political scene; in any case, when New Era Club was formed in the old Ondo State, I was a member and that was when Governor Bamidele Olumilua emerged then. So, it’s not that I just joined politics; I had been at the background.
How did you feel last week when an attempt by the House of Reps to use electronic voting via satellite failed, knowing that the satellite was your baby before you joined politics?
It’s unfortunate because when we started the space programme and we were to launch the communication satellite and we launched the air observation satellite, we felt that we should create two commercial vehicles; one to sell images from the air observation satellite and the other one, to sell bandwidth from the communication satellite. We had two companies but it happened that the more visible one was the Nigcomsat Nigeria Limited. If Nigcomsat has focussed on its primary mandate, it would not be dabbling into the issue of designing electronic voting system. I didn’t feel bad about it because the way Nigcomsat has been managed has generated a lot of controversy in the country, so if that responsibility had been left with the people that should be doing it and Nigcomsat has just been sending the bandwidth, this problem would not have arisen. Of course, in the Senate, we did electronic voting without any problem and the system was set up by a Nigerian. So, it’s not that we don’t have the technology; we found out that instead of distributing loads on about six routers, they were put on one and while the communication was going on, there was fixation and they couldn’t get the result. They should have test-run the system just like we did in the Senate before the actual exercise.
When the space programme started, would you say it was an ambitious project?
No, it was not ambitious. The whole world is going space and it determines the comprehensive power of the nation and the application was so pervasive by the time we went into it. It wasn’t an ego trip by the time we started and gradually now, we are beginning to derive the benefits. What we produced was a semi finished product, now, you have to train people to apply it in security, defence, civil engineering, exploration, health, name it. There is hardly any aspect of the economy where space science can not be used, we just need to train the manpower on the application. That is what is lacking and we tried to work on that.
Is it not possible to have the project based in Nigeria instead of China?
No country is self sufficient in such type of technology; such is managed on collaborative basis. We have two controlling stations, one in Kachi, China and one is here in Nigeria. In engineering, you always design for redundancy, that if A fails, you must have something to take over. If Abuja fails, Kachi will take over and there have been many occasions that Abuja failed and Kachi had taken over. And of course, those who are manning Kachi station are Nigerians, our own engineers.
But some trained engineers by the organisation accused you of dumping them after training.
No, we trained them and wanted them to come back and apply what they had trained for but after training them in post graduate work, they decided to stay back to do PhD. We said no, that we didn’t have that capacity yet but they refused. In government regulation, you can not on your own do something that is not prescribed for you; I believe it was indiscipline.
Instead of retiring from such innovative sector to join politics, why didn’t you continue to nurture it to full maturity?
You know in Nigeria, one year before your tenure ends, people will write petitions against you and will be creating a lot of problems for you because they want you out. And you don’t want to get yourself into that kind of trouble and again when my people wanted me to come and represent them, I had to go.
What then becomes of your governorship ambition?
I don’t have any ambition; when there are opportunities, I try to take advantage of them and if it works, fine and if it doesn’t, too bad. I don’t have an ambition that I must be governor at all cost and if I am going to be governor, God will make it possible and the people.
How was the transition from being a scientist to being a politician?
It was normal and as I said, I had been a member of senate in the university at Ibadan and in Lagos where issues are debated thoroughly and that is what we do in the Nigerian Senate. The university was a training ground for politics and I did not find it difficult to cope.
Would you say you handed over the space programme to a competent hand?
Well, it is not me that determine the competence or otherwise of anybody. My successor emerged in the system and he is been trying his best to beat my record.
The Senate president has come out to say that just one senator deceived the entire Senate during the debate on under age marriage, so you were part of those deceived?
I was in the chamber on that day and unfortunately, we didn’t even vote on the age of marriage. What we voted on was the age by which a citizen could renounce citizenship. How the senator projected it to Islamic issue of marriage, he deceived us. But I must say that the Senate president did very well by trying to resist the blackmail. But as a democrat, he said we should put it to voting and the first time we voted, we agreed that 18 is the marriage age but our colleague came to say that it was against Islamic law. We were blackmailed to go back on the issue and some of our colleagues who didn’t want to be seen as anti-Islam made u-turn and voted against the motion they had earlier supported.
Now that APC has been registered, don’t you envisage problem in the new party?
When a new child is born, there will be teething problem even though it is a party formed from a merger. But the problem we are going to have will not be as the one the PDP is having at its own age. There is hardly any state PDP where there is no problem. The seriousness our leaders put into the merger shows that the party is going to be a formidable opponent to the PDP.
How has it been with two professors in the house as husband and wife?
It is very natural; there is nothing unusual about it. We were both in academics and we were both aspiring to be at the apex of our profession; that is becoming professor just as soldiers want to be generals.
Did you see her as a colleague in the university?
We started our courtship as undergraduates at the University of Ibadan. I graduated in 1971 while she graduated in 1972 and we got married in 1973.
Was she easily persuaded when you wanted to go into politics?
She didn’t like politics at all but she is a very prayerful woman and I think she sought the face of God and eventually she gave me the go ahead. It is because people have stereotyped politicians to be adulterous and dishonest people and that is why women fear when their husbands go into politics. Christians especially fear that politics could cost one salvation. But thank God, we have been very conscious of that.
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