Patrick Dele Cole, the journalist and diplomat who spent decades close to the centre of Nigerian public life, has died in London at the age of 86, after weeks of declining health. Family sources said he had been discharged from intensive care only days before his death.
Newspapers, embassies and the Villa
Born on 4 August 1940, Cole sat on the editorial board of The Guardian before becoming Managing Director of the Daily Times, then one of Nigeria’s most influential newspapers. He went on to serve as Nigeria’s ambassador to Brazil and Argentina.
When civilian rule returned, President Olusegun Obasanjo appointed him Special Adviser on International Relations, a post he held from 1999 to 2007. In the politics of the 1990s he was associated with the Social Democratic Party.
Tributes
President Bola Tinubu said Cole “devoted his life to national service,” praising his work in diplomacy, journalism and politics and his insistence, at the Daily Times, on the press’s duty to hold officials to account. He called Cole’s legacy “an enduring part of our national story.” The writer and former presidential spokesman Reuben Abati described him as a public intellectual.
