Tonye Cole

Tonye Cole Biography / Profile

Tonye Patrick Cole was born on January 11th, 1967 in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria to Mr. Patrick Cole, a former managing director of the Daily Times Newspaper and former ambassador of Nigeria to Brazil. He is an author, mentor, Co-founder Sahara Group and Founder of The Nehemiah Youth Empowerment Initiative.

Tonye Cole Age

Tonye Cole is 57 years old.

Tonye Cole Early Life

Tonye attended the Corona School, Victoria Island and later King’s College in Lagos before proceeding to King’s School in the UK. He is also an alumnus of the University of Lagos and Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil where he received a B.Es/B.Arch. with honours in Architecture and a Certificate of Proficiency in Portuguese respectively.

Tonye Cole Career

Mr. Cole worked as an architect in a Brazilian architectural firm, Grupo Quartro SA in Goiania Brazil from 1990 to 1992. He was involved in the design and implementation of the urban planning and city development of Palmas.

When he returned to Nigeria in 1993, he was employed as the Director of Operations at a Brazilian Civil Engineering company, EMSA S.A. He is the Managing Director of Sahara Energy Resource Limited, which he co-founded in 1996 with his friends Tope Shonubi and Ade Odunsi. Sahara Energy started out as an oil and gas company whose core business at the time was the trading of excess fuel oil from the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries. It later moved away from being a middleman to become an established trading house diversifying into storage depots and vessel ownership as well as building depots in Lagos, Onne and Abuja with a combined capacity of 55,000 metric tons and a fleet of five vessels moving products across West Africa. Today, Sahara Energy is a major employer of labour with staff strength of just over 300 people.

In 2011, he launched the “Nehemiah Project”, a project patterned after Nehemiah’s reputation as the re-builder of Jerusalem. He serves as a board member for Atlas Mara, Bloomberg TV Africa, Enactus Nigeria, Nigerian Chamber of Shipping and Digital Jewels. He is also a member of the World Economic Forum’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI) and the Private Sector Advisory Group of the United Nations Sustainable Development Fund (UN SDG-F). Tonye is known to empower and inspire Nigerian youths to discover, explore and realize their full potential. He is also a frequent speaker at forums, meets and conferences.

Tonye Cole Personal Life

Tonye is married to Sylvia Cole and they are blessed with three beautiful adult children. In January 2017, an old-skool themed party to celebrate his 50th birthday. The event which took place at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, and Lagos, had in attendance top dignitaries from all sectors of the Nigerian high society including an assortment of Nigeria’s leading businessmen, bankers, politicians and socialites.