Tonye Patrick Cole is a Nigerian billionaire businessman and the co-founder of Sahara Group, where he served as Group Executive Director. Sahara Group has grown into a global energy conglomerate with operations spanning the entire energy value chain across Nigeria, West Africa, East Africa, and beyond, operating in over 38 countries with more than 4,000 employees and annual revenues in excess of $11 billion. He played a central role in driving the Group’s international expansion while strengthening its corporate governance standards, engaging actively with global institutions such as the World Economic Forum through the Partnering Against Corruption Initiative, the United Nations via the UNDP Sustainable Development Group Fund advisory platform, and the African Philanthropy Forum, among others.
He was recently featured on the Afropolitan podcast, and here are some key lessons on personal finance, entrepreneurship and investments drawn from the conversation.
On Saving Early and Letting It Shape Your Options
"I came back from brazil then MSA called and that is how I started that job. It was a dollar paying job, it was a good job, I actually did save on that job... The company after about two three years decided they were leaving. So I moved from having a job to having no job, but that taught me a lesson. So It was the savings from that job and the pay off from the liquidation of the company that I used as part of my own start up capital for Sahara group".
Listening to Tonye Cole speak about his early career, what stands out is not necessarily a grand breakthrough, but a quiet discipline that would later prove decisive and useful. He had a good dollar-paying job, he worked, and importantly, he saved.
Then the company left, and just like that, income stopped. But that moment did not end his journey, it redirected it. The savings from that period, alongside what came from the company’s liquidation, became part of the capital that went into starting Sahara Group.
It is easy to think of savings as something you do for safety. Something to fall back on when things go wrong. But in reality, savings does something more powerful than that. It gives you room to act. It allows you to respond to change without panic, and sometimes, it becomes the seed for something much bigger.
Many people wait for the perfect income level before they begin to save. But if anything, his story reminds you that the habit matters more than the amount. Because when the moment comes, it is not intention that will carry you, it is preparation.
On Understanding your Environment and Positioning Yourself Accordingly
"There was the expatriate or colonial mentality at the time... once you were white in Nigeria then you would basically get everything. My partner and I thought through what strategy we could use. We set up Sahara and we would go into offices. But we realised that if we went in as young 27 and 28 year old people and said that we owned the company, the people would look at you as if, "who are you". There was that ageism issue. Then we realised that everybody who was in that business, succeeding in the business were foreign companies.
So we registered our company abroad in the Isle of Man, so we had a UK entity. We discussed with my Partner's teacher at the time, and said this is who we are, we are going to say that we work for you, we had a lovely name that was not a Nigerian name (Dr Jasel), so we set up this company where we were representatives to ourselves. But we would go there as staff, and beg to get jobs/contracts.
So because they felt that they were helping young Nigerians who were working for this foreign company it helped us make a way. So that is how we started navigating that window. They were sympathetic enough to want to help young Nigerians, but at the same time, they were not out of the mindset that only white international companies were in this business. It took them about 3 years to decode that the foreign entity was ourselves, but by then we had settled down and they had to go with us".
In the early days of building Sahara, the challenge was not competence. It was perception.
Young Nigerians, in their late twenties, walking into rooms where credibility was often tied to foreign identity and age. They quickly realised that being right was not always enough, you also had to be accepted.
So they adjusted.
They structured the business in a way that aligned with how the market thought at the time. They positioned themselves differently, not to deceive, but to gain entry into a system that would otherwise have shut them out. Over time, the truth became clear, but by then, it no longer mattered. They had built trust, delivered value, and established themselves, and could no longer be dismissed or regarded less.
This is a live example of what we discussed in our article for NMSMEs on working your opportunities and living in your context.
Progress is not always about pushing against the system. Sometimes, it is about understanding it deeply enough to navigate it skillfully and with agility.
On Diversification: Ignoring Advice and Learning the Hard Way
"We had started building a business in the export of fuel oils. It was one line, dollar earnings. One guy in NNPC advised us to diversify our risks and come and do diesel. Stop staying on this one business line. We felt why leave a dollar earning business for a Naira generating business. But he said to us you can always convert the naira to FX. But we refused.
This taught me to listen to advice even when we do not see the value immediately.
A few years later, Abacha dies, and the next administration that comes in cancels all our contracts, which usually happens during administration changes. Essentially, overnight we went bankrupt, and had to start all over again. So at this point we decided to diversify portfolios, do not stick to one, and diversify countries- country risk diversification, product risk diversification".
At some point, their business was doing well in fuel oil exports, a strong dollar-earning line that felt secure. Then came a piece of advice from someone within the system. Diversify. Expand beyond a single line.
They did not take it.
The reasoning felt sound. Why leave something that was working for something uncertain? Why trade a dollar stream for a naira one?
Then circumstances changed. A new administration came in, contracts were cancelled, and almost overnight, the business was wiped out.
It is one thing to hear about diversification. It is another to experience why it matters.
From that point, their thinking changed. They diversified across products and across countries. They began to spread risk in a way they had previously resisted.
For anyone building wealth or managing investments, the lesson is difficult to ignore. What feels secure today may not remain so. Concentration can look like strength until conditions change. If you are building in a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) environment like Africa, you need to think about diversifying income streams early. Several entrepreneurs and businesses have been affected in the past just by a single policy change, which is usual in this environment.
And even as an individual, working for someone or self-employed, you also need to think early about diversifying your income stream, because that job can stop as a result of policy changes or changes in business direction of the company you work for.
In environments like Africa, outcomes are not driven by effort alone. Policy shifts, currency risk, and timing can materially alter results, which makes diversification not just a strategy, but a necessity.
On Learning Before Building, and Guarding Against Comfort
"While in school, I had already started making money through side hustles, designing models for companies, and others. And my desire after school was to go into entrepreneurship, no need job hunting. My Father asked me of my plans after school and I mentioned to him.
Then he advised me to go work for someone for 5 years and use the time to learn HR, marketing, how to handle money, accounting, etc, to reduce the amount of mistakes I would make in setting up my own business. I found myself ending up doing that.
But by the time this was happening, I found myself entering into a comfort zone... and this is where the danger is... so all my entrepreneurial drive and hunger died. Because I entered into this comfort area where I could afford a car, I could start paying for a house, access to a house in Ikoyi, earning in dollars, etc. So my entrepreneurial spirit went down. It was when the business crashed that I had to retrace my steps".
There was the early advice from his father. Work for someone for a few years. Learn how businesses operate. Understand money, people, and structure. Reduce the mistakes you will make when you eventually build your own. Which is a valid advice for anyone intending to go into entrepreneurship.
He followed that path.
But something else happened along the way. Comfort settled in. A steady income, a good life, access to things that made life easier. And slowly, almost unnoticed, the urgency to build began to fade. The hunger softened.
It took disruption to bring that clarity back.
Several disruptive and transformative entrepreneurial ideas have been sacrificed on the altar of comfort, especially from good paying jobs. And that is an irony. Sometimes in the quest to go out there and work for someone in order to learn before launching yours, you could get carried away. The key is in striking a balance, and always keeping the entrepreneurial compass in front of you.
There is nothing wrong with stability. In many ways, it is necessary. But it is also worth asking what it is doing to your ambition. Comfort can be useful, but it can also delay movement if you are not paying attention.
Always keep your eyes on the goal, and regularly go back to it to check how you are faring.
On Compounding Beyond Money
One of the ideas he reflects on deeply is compounding.
He started saving early, from his teenage years, and continued over decades. There were losses along the way, poor decisions, moments where things did not go as planned. But the habit remained. And over time, that consistency built a kind of financial resilience that is difficult to shake.
But what is even more interesting is how he extends the idea beyond money.
Relationships compound. Experience compounds. Knowledge compounds.
The people you stay connected to over time, the lessons you carry forward, the discipline you build through repetition, all of these grow quietly in the background. You may not notice it day to day, but over years, the effect becomes significant.
It ties into a simple idea: Play long-term games with long-term people. The returns may not always be immediate, but they tend to be meaningful.
On Losses and Staying in the Game Long Enough
There is no attempt to present a perfect journey. There were losses. Deals that did not work. Periods where capital was lost.
But what stands out is not the loss itself, but what followed.
Because there was a consistent habit of saving and rebuilding, those setbacks did not define the outcome. They became part of the process.
In investing, this is a point that is often misunderstood. The goal is not to avoid loss entirely. That is unrealistic. The goal is to build in a way that allows you to recover and continue.
Staying in the game, over time, tends to matter more than any single outcome.
On Partnerships and Getting the Mix Right
Partnerships are often spoken about in simple terms, but in reality, they are complex.
From his perspective, many partnerships struggle for familiar reasons. Issues around money. Personal matters creeping into business decisions. And a lack of trust or balance in personalities.
What has worked for him is the idea of complementary strengths.
You need the person who can push aggressively. You need the one who slows things down, reads every line, and questions assumptions. And you need someone who can sit between both, balancing speed with caution.
Too much of one approach creates risk. Too little diversity creates blind spots.
It is a reminder that in both business and investing, balance is not accidental. It is built.
Read more about having meaningful partnerships in our previous article here.
On Knowing When It Is Time to Pivot
There are moments in life when things begin to shift. What used to feel natural starts to feel forced. Progress becomes harder. Energy drops. There is a kind of internal signal that something is no longer aligned.
He describes this as a form of restlessness.
The difficulty is that fear and comfort often keep people in place longer than they should. And if that continues, the situation may eventually collapse, forcing a move that could have been made earlier with more control.
For investors, this shows up in a different way. Holding on to positions or strategies simply because they worked in the past can be costly. There is a need, from time to time, to reassess and adjust. In investing, this is how people get stuck in declining stocks. What once worked becomes the reason they refuse to exit. The discipline to pivot is often the difference between preserving capital and compounding it.
Like in Science, "an object will continue in a state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is acted upon by an external force". That is Newton's first law of motion.
If you must make progress, especially geometric progress, you need to pay attention to the shifts that are happening around you, those internal signals, in order to know when to pivot or reinvent yourself.
Movement, when it is necessary, should not always be delayed.
On Sacrifice and the Seasons That Build Outcomes
In the early days of Sahara, there were years without income. There were no salaries, no immediate rewards. Everything earned went back into the business. Just as we have described in a previous article titled "Reinvest or stagnate: Why building equity is the secret to MSME growth"
Life still had to go on. For him, it was his wife’s income that sustained the household during that period. It required trust, patience, and a shared belief in what they were building.
These are the parts of the story that are easy to overlook. The seasons where nothing seems to be coming back, where progress feels slow, where sacrifice is required without immediate validation.
From a financial perspective, it highlights the importance of planning and support systems. Not every investment or venture yields quickly. Some require time, and the willingness to endure that time.
In Conclusion: Building Patterns That Stand the Test of Time
When you step back and look at the journey, the lessons begin to connect in an interesting pattern.
Savings created the starting point. Diversification built resilience. Compounding strengthened the foundation. Relationships extended the journey. And the willingness to adapt ensured survival.
None of these happened once. They were repeated over time, and that is perhaps the most important takeaway.
Personal finance and investing are rarely defined by a single moment. They are shaped by patterns. The habits you build, the decisions you repeat, and the discipline you maintain over time.
If there is anything to take from Tonye Cole’s journey, it is this. Consistency, over a long enough period, has a way of quietly changing outcomes.
Not every story will scale the same way. Saving alone does not automatically lead to building a Sahara Group. There are structural realities, access, timing, networks, and macroeconomic conditions that also play a role. But what these lessons do offer is something more controllable, the ability to prepare, to stay resilient, and to increase your odds over time.
At Cowryvest, we will continue to share insights that help you see opportunities and patterns clearly and act on them with confidence and consistency.
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