A young Nigerian-owned startup once disguised itself as an expatriate firm headed by a fictitious British figure to break into the oil and gas sector, Sahara Group co-founder Tonye Cole has revealed.
Speaking on the Afropolitan podcast, Cole recounted how he and his partners registered Sahara Group in the Isle of Man to bypass deep-seated bias and ageism in the local energy industry.
“Back then… there was what you would call the expatriate mentality, colonial mentality,” Cole explained. “It just meant that if you were white in Nigeria, then you would basically get everything.”
At the time, the partners were in their late 20s and found that prospective clients struggled to take young, local entrepreneurs seriously. Realising that foreign-backed firms dominated the market, the founders devised a workaround.
They registered the company offshore and cited a former teacher as their figurehead. “We had a lovely name, Dr J, which was not a Nigerian name,” Cole recalled.
Posing as mere representatives of the UK-registered entity, the founders used the perception of an overseas employer to gain traction. Clients, believing they were supporting local staff employed by a foreign boss, were far more receptive to doing business with them.
The illusion lasted roughly three years before clients began questioning why they had never met the elusive Dr J in person. By then, however, the firm had already built a firm foothold in the industry.
Reflecting on the ruse, Cole noted that the experience highlighted the extreme structural hurdles facing young Nigerian business owners at the time. His own entrepreneurial drive began earlier as an architecture student at the University of Lagos, where he crafted architectural models—a phase that taught him the value of adaptability and partnership.
Today, Sahara Group has evolved into a major multinational energy conglomerate operating across multiple countries. Cole subsequently entered politics, running as the All Progressives Congress candidate in the 2023 Rivers State governorship election.