Patrick Dele Cole

Patrick Dele Cole was born on August 4, 1940. His family roots are in Abonnema, in the Kalabari Kingdom of present-day Rivers State, Nigeria, but he spent much of his childhood in Enugu, where he attended St. Bartholomew's School from 1946 to 1953. He told the Daily Pennsylvanian in 1997 that growing up amid the shift from colonial rule toward independence, and listening to his parents talk about politics, first sparked his interest in history and political science. He later wrote about his schooldays in his newspaper columns, including breaking his left arm playing football at 15.

After St. Bartholomew's School in Enugu (1946 to 1953), Cole attended Baptist High School, Port Harcourt (1954 to 1958) and Ibadan Grammar School (1959 to 1960). In 1962 he took up a Commonwealth scholarship at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, where he earned a first class honours degree in a double major programme. He continued under a UNESCO fellowship at the Free University in the Netherlands, then moved to the University of Cambridge (1966 to 1970), where he completed a doctorate in history and served as a Fellow of King's College from 1970 to 1973. His Cambridge thesis became the book Modern and Traditional Elites in the Politics of Lagos (Cambridge University Press, 1975).

Cole taught history at the University of Pennsylvania before returning to Nigeria in 1973 as an administrative officer in the federal Cabinet Office. There he worked on the programme for the transfer of power from military to civilian rule, took part in Operation Feed the Nation and wrote speeches for the head of state.

In 1975 he was appointed a non-executive director of the Daily Times, representing the federal government after it took a 60 percent stake in the company. In 1976 he became managing director. He steadied the company after the forced exit of Alhaji Babatunde Jose, set up Nigeria's first newspaper editorial board under Stanley Macebuh, recruited Dele Giwa and Sam Oni, kept up the group's training programmes and moved the presses to a new site at Agidingbi, Ikeja. He publicly backed his editors when officials tried to stop stories, and he appeared with editor Tony Momoh before the Senate to defend the paper. He left in 1980 after the Shagari administration replaced his team.

He lent his weight to the founding of The Guardian in 1983 and later sat on its editorial board. In 1987 he became Nigeria's ambassador to Brazil and Argentina, and he also served as Special Adviser on International Relations. In 1992 he ran for the presidential nomination of the Social Democratic Party before the military government cancelled the primaries and banned the aspirants. In 1997 he spent a semester as a visiting professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. In later decades he was a businessman, a weekly Vanguard columnist and a frequent guest on Arise News, Channels Television, CNBC Africa and Al Jazeera.

Cole was married to Pastor Mina Dugoabere Cole (née Amachree), of the Obiali Amachree family of Buguma, a pastor in the Redeemed Christian Church of God. She died in London on October 1, 2021, aged 73, after a long illness, and was buried in Buguma in December 2021. The family statement named him as Ambassador Chief Dr. Patrick Dele Cole OFR, of the Young Jack family of Abonnema. Their children include his first son, Tonye Cole, a businessman and the APC governorship candidate in Rivers State in 2019, and Biodun Cole. He lived in Victoria Island, Lagos, where he celebrated his 85th and 86th birthdays with family and friends.

Cole believed journalism was a public trust. In an August 2026 Arise News interview he said a journalist's first responsibility is to the audience, to tell uncomfortable truths, and recalled that presidents had threatened to lock him up over what his journalists wrote. After his 1992 presidential bid he became openly critical of money politics, saying wealth had made politics an exclusive club. At his 86th birthday he said ethical leadership starts at home, urged young Nigerians to refuse money for votes and said meaningful change was still possible. He also spoke often about tribalism as a long-running source of national disunity.

Cole is credited with bringing academics into the Nigerian newsroom and with creating the editorial board model that almost every Nigerian newspaper now follows. The Guardian's editorial board wrote in 2020 that he changed the face of journalism in Nigeria forever. His Daily Times years are remembered for editorial independence and commercial strength, and his recruitment of Stanley Macebuh and Dele Giwa shaped a generation of Nigerian journalism. His 1975 study of Lagos elites remains a standard source on the colonial politics of the city.

Cole held the national honour of Officer of the Order of the Niger (OFR) and the chieftaincy title of Chief. He was the 54th honouree of the CVL LWT documentary series, and Arise News profiled him in 2020 as a leading light in Nigerian journalism. President Bola Tinubu marked his 85th birthday in 2025 with a public message praising his leadership of the Daily Times and his diplomatic service.

His main scholarly work is Modern and Traditional Elites in the Politics of Lagos (Cambridge University Press, African Studies Series, 1975), reprinted and relaunched in Lagos on March 10, 2015, with a review by Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka. Library records also link him to Nigeria Since Independence: Politics and Constitutions, the First Twenty-Five Years. For years he wrote a weekly column in Vanguard on politics, health, education and world affairs, and he appeared regularly on Nigerian and international television.

Patrick Dele Cole died in London on the morning of Saturday, October 17, 2026, aged 86, family sources told Western Post. No cause of death had been made public at the time of reporting, and the family said further announcements would follow. Two months earlier he had celebrated his 86th birthday at his home in Victoria Island, Lagos.