Olusoji Elias

Olusoji Elias was called to the Nigeria Bar in 1985, having read law at the University of London (LLB Honours LSE 1984; postgraduate legal research UCL 1996), and at the University of Hull (LLM with Distinction 1986; best performing candidate), and The Hague Academy (1989). He is the author of Judicial Remedies in the Conflict of Laws (Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2001, with a Foreword by the Rt. Hon. The Lord Wilberforce PC CMG OBE QC), as well as many peer-reviewed articles, reviews and commentary in leading law journals.

He was previously a senior lawyer in a firm in Nigeria between 2001 and 2005, serving for example as a leading local counsel in an international consortium mandated by the Government of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to privatise the downstream subsector of the local oil and gas sector, among several other major privatizations conducted within the World Bank Guidelines; as a member of the Technical Committee of the Central Bank of Nigeria to advise as to the consolidation of the local banking industry via M&A; and as leading counsel in the defence of a local bank involved in large-scale cross-border banking litigation; as well as in several top-tier international arbitrations under the ICC Paris Rules. He also led numerous capitalisations, private placements, IPOs, re-structurings, issuances and other financings and financial law items during this time, including an experts' delivery broadcast on national television.

Between 1990 and 1999, he was a law lecturer in English university and vocational legal education, often in CPD formats (giving, among several items, the Autumn Lecture of the Society for Advanced Legal Studies of the University of London in November 2000 (as an Associate Fellow thereof), titled Globalisation and Private International Law- Reviewing Contemporary Local Law), as well as a consulting expert to solicitors' firms in London. His range has covered cutting-edge topics including globalisation and law, competition law and policy in reference to transnational corporate finance, the professions, and several others.

He is a member of several lawyers' professional organisations and associations, including the Inner Temple, the IBA, the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, and the Association of Attenders and Alumni of The Hague Academy of International Law and its Professional Lawyers' Intergroup. Olusoji Elias was elected to the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in October 2007. He divides his time between Nigeria and the U.K.