Tony Cole was born in Port Harcourt, Rivers State on 11 January 1967. He is married with three adult children.
He 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, BrazilHe 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.In 2011, he launched the “Nehemiah Project”, a project patterned after Nehemiah’s reputation as the re-builder of Jerusalem.He is also known to empower and inspire Nigerian youths to discover, explore and realize their full potential.
He is married to Sylvia Cole and they are blessed with beautiful children.
He is the son of former managing director of the Daily Times Newspaper and former Ambassador of Nigeria to Brazil Patrick Dele Cole.
He is a Nigerian billionaire entrepreneur, executive director and co-founder of Sahara Group.
He serves as a board member for Atlas Mara, Bloomberg TV Africa, Enactus Nigeria, Nigerian Chamber of Shipping and Digital.
Jewels. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI) and also the PrivateSector Advisory Group of the United Nations Sustainable Development Fund (UN SDG-F).Cole won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the United Kingdom Oil and Gas Council in 2017.
TDC worked as an architect for frontline Brazilian architectural firm GrupoQuartro SA in Goiania Brazil between _1990-1992_ , where he was involved in the design and implementation of the urban planning and city development of Palmas, the capital city of the newly created state of Tocantins. The city of Palmas was designed as a ‘green fields’ project and built up from scratch.
Amongst the projects he worked on in Palmas were the State Ministry of Justice HQ and the City Hall.
Upon his return to Nigeria, TDC was recruited in 1993 as the Director of Operations EMSA S.A., a Brazilian civil engineering company, the 7th largest engineering firm in Brazil that was awarded World Bank-financed water projects for Lagos State Water Corporation. He was responsible for incorporating and setting up the Nigerian office, recruiting the local staff and managing the office. The company, in a joint venture with Sakamori Limited successfully executed three World Bank sponsored contracts valued at $58m and one ADB sponsored contract for Anambra State Water Corporation valued at $15m.
Sahara Energy started out as an oil and gas company whose core business at the time was the trading of excess fuel from the Port Harcourt and Warri refineries.
This was followed by diversification into storage depot and vessel ownership. He built depots in Lagos, Onne and Abuja with a combined capacity of 55,000 metric tones and a fleet of five vessels moving products across West Africa, with a combination of hard-work and dogged determination not to be a middleman in the transactions, Sahara Energy established itself as a credible trading house within three years of conception, with a respectable trading line from a first class international bank, BNP Paribas.
Today, Sahara Energy is a major employer of labour with a staff strength of over 400 people, upstream assets comprising of nine blocks, 87 one deep water block in Ghana and deeply in developing the domestic gas infrastructure.
Under his watch as the Co-founder and Group Executive Director of Sahara Group, the company has many landmark achievements. The most recent of Sahara Group’s intervention is the Food Africa project which seeks to pilot an innovative approach aimed at revamping the food sector to create new jobs for young people, increase farmers’ revenues, improve productivity, enhance nutrition and reduce food loss through more sustainable production practices. The project which has Kaduna State as the pilot location is being driven by Sahara Group, the Kaduna State government, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Fund (UNSDG-F) and UN Goodwill Ambassadors, brothers Joan, Josep and Jordi Roca of Restaurant El Celler can Roca, ranked among the best chefs of the world.
Recently, Sahara unveiled its extrapreneurship platform to reach 12 million beneficiaries in the next four years through platforms that find, create and connect young extrapreneurs in emerging markets. Rivers State will no doubt benefit immensely from this platform.
His passion for youth development and giving back to the less-privileged led to the establishment of his foundation, the Nehemiah Youth Empowerment Initiative.
Through the Nehemiah Youth Empowerment Initiative, Cole regularly supports other foundations like the Down Syndrome Society, Slum2School Foundation, and Bethesda School for the Blind . He also serves on the advisory boards of various youth focused charities such as Africa 2.0 Foundation and Sapinda Rainbow Foundation .
Owing to his desire to save life through effective sanitary and health intervention scheme, TDC has led Sahara Foundation in the execution of several projects including the provision of borehole for clean water across Nigeria in conjunction with the Carter Foundation. This specifically was to ensure guinea worm eradication.
These programmes focused on providing clean water, encouraging proper hygiene and sanitation amongst communities and primary school pupils. The Foundation also launched the Inclusive Education Project for Persons living with Disabilities partnering with Cedar Seed Foundation to provide scholarships to one hundred beneficiaries, who also received wheelchairs, elbow crutches, guide canes, hearing aids, walking sticks and sunglasses to drive cross-sectorial collaboration. This is made possible by connecting the right people and organisations towards providing sustainable solutions to global social problems.
TDC is also an active member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Advisory Council for Energy, member, World Economic Forum’s Partnering Against Corruption Initiative (PACI) amongst others.
Cole won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the United Kingdom Oil and Gas Council in 2017.
With his humanitarian services, the Youth, the less-privileged, helpless mothers & children, orphanages and the entire Rivers State will greatly benefit from his administration as a Governor .
Cole won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the United Kingdom Oil and Gas Council in 2017.
It high time we vote for our own JOSHUA who can, will and surely lead us to the Promise Land.
VOTE HIM AND HE SHALL DELIVER
When we vote for him he makes us laugh.
also read: VOTE NOT FIGHT
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