Biography, Net Worth, Wife, Children, Governorship Aspirant Rivers, Tonye Cole

Tonye Patrick Cole

Mr. Tonye Cole is the Governorship Aspirant under the APC Rivers State, who recently resigned From the board of Sahara Group.

Tonye Patrick Cole was born in 1967, is a Nigerian billionaire, entrepreneur and a philantropist. He had experienced financial bankruptcy, before, co-founding Sahara Group.

Below is his brief biography as reported by Wealth-X. Chris Whiteoak / The National

10 THINGS YOU DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT TONYE PATRICK COLE

The Managing Director and Co-Founder of Sahara Group, Tonye Cole was born in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria and his is the offspring of Patrick Cole. He was involved in the design and implementation of the urban planning and city development of Palmas. There is no doubt that he has been a source of encouragement and inspiration to the youth of Nigeria and Africa.

Tonye Cole

Here are 10 things you probably didn’t know about the Managing Director and Co-founder of Sahara Group, Tonye Cole:

1. Tonye Cole was born in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria and his is the offspring of Patrick Cole.

2. He attended the Corona School, Victoria Island and later King’s College in Lagos before proceeding to King’s School in the UK.

3. He is also an alumnus of the University of Lagos and Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil.

4. He worked as an architect in a Brazilian architectural firm, Grupo Quartro SA in Goiania Brazil from 1990 to 1992.

5. He was involved in the design and implementation of the urban planning and city development of Palmas.

6. When he returned to Nigeria in 1993, he was employed as the Director of Operations at a Brazilian Civil Engineering company, EMSA S.A.

7. In 2011, he launched the “Nehemiah Project”, a project patterned after Nehemiah’s reputation as the re-builder of Jerusalem.

8. He is known as a frequent speaker at forums, meets and conferences.

9. He is also known to empower and inspire Nigerian youths to discover, explore and realize their full potential.

10. He is married to Sylvia Cole and they are blessed with beautiful children.

Billionaire Tonye Cole: 'Bankruptcy taught me to value money less'

The Nigerian businessman and philanthropist reveals how losing everything changed his perspective on money.

Tonye Cole, the chief executive of the Sahara Group, has an estimated worth of $1.4 billion, according to Wealth-X. Chris Whiteoak / The National,  November 16, 2017

Tonye Cole is a very wealthy man today - but he has not always been so fortunate. The Nigerian billionaire, who is co-founder and group executive director of one of the country’s largest energy conglomerates, Sahara Group, lost everything in the late 1990s before going on to amass the enormous wealth he has today. Mr Cole went bankrupt in 1998 after he and his business partners invested money into an oil transaction that was cancelled by the incoming administration in Nigeria after the military rule Sani Abacha died. However, today Mr Cole's estimated worth sits at $1.4 billion, according to Wealth-X. The businessman is also a philanthropist, supporting numerous charities, such as the Down Syndrome Society, Slum2School Foundation and Bethesda School for the Blind through his foundation, Nehemiah Youth Empowerment Initiative. Mr Cole was recently in Dubai to speak at the 19th Naseba Global Women in Leadership Economic Forum.

How did your upbringing affect your attitude to money?

My father was away for university on scholarships and left when I was very little. I grew up in a home with multiple children, so you had to fight for everything. Nothing was given to you, so to speak, so I learned to be independent very early. My family came back home and I started living with my parents again when I was 16. By then it was pretty much formed in my mind, independently, how to fend for myself. And all of that instilled in me the discipline to know that you do not get anything for free. You have to practically fight for everything that you can get. And whatever you have you need to be prudent with it. That shaped me financially.

How much did you earn in your first job?

As a junior architect in Brazil in 1990, it would be somewhere in the region of $8,000 per annum.

Are you a spender or a saver?

In my personal life I save for things I feel are important. I save for my family; I save for fees, for my children, wife and holidays. But then I spend a lot more helping people. I quietly do a lot of spending but then my wife has to be aware of that so we do help a lot of people.

What fuels your philanthropy?

In life I have found two things: you can make a lot of money, but you can also lose it very quickly. We have been through that scenario where I made a lot of money but also lost it. When you lose money, you look back and reflect on when you had it and what you did with it. It is very important when you have money that you make sure to impact lives. You do things where you are impacting people because the day might come when you don’t have it. And when you look back, you should feel that you made a difference with what you had, when you had it. We also realised that the lives you touch along the way is a 'pay it forward' kind of thing. Down the line you find that those people, in one way or another, play an important role in getting you back up again.

How did you pick yourself up after going bankrupt?

Failure teaches you a lot. You find out one thing very quickly: that relationships don’t end if you build on them and keep them. And depending on how you build those relationships, you can always build on them. Relationships create opportunities and opportunities will give you the chance to get up and work again. So that’s what helped. The fact that you have done it again. If you have done it before you will do it again.

How did the experience change your financial outlook? Did it make money more important, or less?

Less, because you find out that it can grow wings, so do not get attached to it.

What financial advice would you offer your younger self?

That money has more value when you use it to impact lives than when you use it for anything material. And so it is good to acquire, but it is much better to impact. And so I would have started much earlier impacting others’ lives.

What do you invest in?

Primarily I invest in Sahara. That is where the bulk of my time and money is rotated back into and has been so for many years. There are minor investments in property, stocks and bonds but far more important is the investment in Sahara.

READ ALSO: Rivers State Governorship Nominee, Tonye Cole Meets Buhari

What is your most cherished possession?

I’m not sure I have anything I hold on to. Loss does something to you. You find that if you hold on to anything material that much, the impact it has on you as a person and how you live is too devastating.

I see things as transient, an access or a gateway to something else - so you need a home, somewhere to sleep. I collect artwork, not for the value of it, but because I think it beautifies the space.

Once you come into that space it either relaxes you or makes you feel a lot better about the environment that you sit in. But I wouldn’t hold on to the value of that artwork so much, saying that if that artwork is destroyed then my whole life is destroyed. My relationship with material things is more about the ambience it creates rather than the do or die hold of it.

Related Topics: #TonyeCole #APC #RiversState #2019Election

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