Tonye Cole, the gem of the ‘Sahara’

I got an invite from someone I hold in high regard to celebrate his birthday with friends and family at ‘Bethseda Home for the blind’ at Moshalashi Bustop, off Agege Motor road in Lagos and I haven’t recovered from the experience till date.

Dressed in a simple T-shirt and Jeans, my ‘date’ for this week welcomed everyone who came to the ‘home’ to celebrate with him. Notable dignitaries, family, friends, well wishers and surely his fellow bikers were all on ground to support him by giving various sums of money and food items as their contribution to Bethesda Home. It was an awesome event and as I reminisce over the day, it’s still clear in my mind how children from the home thrilled us all with their dancing.

 

At a point I asked the lady sitting beside me “are these children blind for real?” I asked because they were so coordinated in their dance steps that we were all in awe. When the woman who teaches them how to dance was asked how she did it, she told us all how she would lead them to hold her waist and then they followed her movement and even became more creative in expressing themselves.

It was such an amazing sight to behold. If I thought I had seen it all then I was certainly wrong because, next came a member of the home who cracked us all up with his jokes and ended saying to everyone “a blind person is not someone without eyes but someone without vision, we have vision therefore we are not blind” of course by the time he was done, we were all on our feet applauding him intensely. What a way for someone truly blessed in every sense of the word to share his birthday. Nice one I must commend. Who have I been talking about? You ask…well, he is none other than Tonye Cole, a Co-Founder and Group Executive Director of Sahara Group. Tonye graces my page for this week.

If there is one common factor a lot of people who know him have agreed to, it is the fact that Tonye is humble, he is focused, determined, successful and very positive about Nigeria despite the myriad of challenges in the country; he always sees light at the end of the tunnel.

Sahara Group is an energy conglomerate with a strong operating presence spanning the entire energy value chain in Nigeria to neighbouring West African countries and past the African sphere to Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

Sahara Group is a leading privately owned power, energy, gas and infrastructure conglomerate established in 1996 with operating companies active in the downstream, midstream, upstream, infrastructure and power sectors. Sahara has presence in different locations including Africa, The Caribbean, Asia and Europe.

Read also: Former Sahara Group boss charges regulators on partnerhips in businesses at NCRIB-LAC AGM

Over the years, Sahara Group has become well established in the Oil and Gas industry and has built a reputation around the world for excellent service delivery and professionalism.

The Group, in addition to major achievements in the Oil and Gas sector, now has operations and assets in utilities, farming, infrastructure development and real estate with offices in Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, Benin Republic, United Kingdom, Singapore, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and Angola.

Today, the company continues to make substantial investments in human capital development in its locations across the globe to ensure that it is equipped to navigate boundaries, explore and develop opportunities in the Energy sector.

Currently, 20 operating countries – spanning the entire energy value chain, Sahara Group has over 600 employees and staffers with offices in Nigeria, Cote D’Ivoire, Ghana, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Singapore and UAE. Sahara’s annual turnover is in excess of  US $11.4 Billion.

In addition to founding and managing one of Nigeria`s largest energy conglomerates, Tonye is also the founder of the Nehemiah Youth Empowerment Initiative, which is an NGO set up to empower the Nigerian youths in different parts of the country. Consequently, he is a “Brand Ambassador” for Nigeria, working to inspire the youths to unlock the continent`s tremendous human potential.

This is achieved by working closely with a good number of foundations in Nigeria (Africa 2.0, Rise Youth Foundation, Down Syndrome Foundation, Servant Leaders Foundation, Compassion Center for Physically Handicapped Children in Port Harcourt, Cheshire Home for the Disabled in Lagos, Slum2School Project and various charitable organizations).

Tonye Cole has delivered numerous papers on diverse topics such as Oil and Gas Dynamics, Sustainable Energy, Youth Empowerment, Entrepreneurship and Capacity‐Building, Leadership, Change, Strategy, among others. He has also participated actively in various seminars, trainings and conferences till date. Cole attended the University of Lagos where he gained his merit Honors in Architecture and is also an alumni of Universidade de Brasilia, Brazil and Havard Business School. He is happily married to his long time sweetheart Sylvia Cole, a medical practitioner and they are blessed with three beautiful children.

At Sahara, Tonye Cole is responsible for the new ventures and business development as well as enforcing corporate ethics and compliance. He also manages and spearheads the Group’s upstream exploration and production activities.

Sahara Group has been ardently involved in the privatisation process of the country’s ailing power sector by the Federal Government “if there is one area Nigerians do not joke with, it is electricity and my organisation is honoured to be part of those chosen through the privatisation process to help contribute to the power sector. We are constantly on our toes ensuring we do our very best. It’s not magic and the sector cannot transform over night because of what has been on ground before now however, we are optimistic about that sector and God helping us, we will do our best.” He says.

It is true that Sahara Group has become an organisation to reckon with however, Tonye tells me it hasn’t been rosy all the way. Hear him “starting up, we came up with ideas that the older generation might not have had an idea of as at then. We brought in newness and freshness, it was a field that was then dominated by foreigners and we were young but focused on what we wanted to achieve. We dared to tread on uncommon grounds and today we look back and are grateful for how far God has brought us.”

“I remember back then in our days of little beginnings, we made complimentary cards without titles, it just had our names and address. We were burning with ideas for change and ‘showing off titles’ wasn’t on our front burner we just wanted to be success stories and we were ready to pay the price through hardwork and positive impact.” Tonye reveals.

As a successful entrepreneur, Tonye lets me into cogent points of running a business. Hear him “To run a successful business, you must be focused and have a clear direction of where you are going, you must have integrity, say what you believe you can do and do it to the best of your God given abilities. It is very important to employ the best hands, people even more gifted and intelligent than you. You must invest in people and also look for a niche in your line of business because even in your field, you can be blessed to see things in a different light from every other person.” he admonishes.

Speaking on challenges faced as an organisation, Tonye says “challenges will always come but there is grace by God to surmount them all. The challenges we faced when we started are different from the ones we are facing now however, we must see challenges as opportunities. Our challenge back then when we started was starting up a company in a field that was dominated by older people and starting as Nigerians also in a field primarily dominated by foreigners…we started doing local content a long time ago even before it became popular. We had to convince those we met that as Nigerians, we have ideas to bring to the table and I am glad today that there are hundreds of people in this line of business that are Nigerians.” He tells me and further advices “Do not go into business if you have fear of failure because there are things that have to happen for you to learn from and we must learn from these to become better in what we do.”

Ever passionate about the youths and the nation at large, Tonye has this to say “one of the biggest mistakes my own generation made was that many of the quality ‘hands’ ignored politics for business, a mistake the younger generation cannot afford to make. I sat down with an elderly man of another generation and shared my vision of a Nigeria I want to see with him and he said to me, ‘as long as you are outside of the decision making process in this nation, you cannot make a change.’ And that really got me thinking meaning, as long as you stay outside, and you are talking on podiums, as long as you deal with people one after the other from outside, you will not be able to make a change.”

“If you really want to make a change, affect the masses, do things that will make positive impact at every level,  from the very rich to the very poor, from the impoverished, whether on education, health, policies, police, army, whatever level, there is one place that can touch all of these people and that place is in the government, you must get into politics, into government and encourage the youth to become actively involved in the decision making of this great country and as long as they don’t, no change will happen.”