Gbolahan Elias

Professor Gbolahan Elias SAN is a partner at G. Elias and a distinguished legal practitioner with extensive experience in corporate and commercial law. He earned his BA and BCL degrees with First Class Honours from Magdalen and Merton Colleges, Oxford University, followed by an MA and a D.Phil. He was called to the Nigerian Bar in 1981 and the New York Bar in 1990, and has held the title of Senior Advocate of Nigeria since 2005.

Professor Elias has served as Chairman of the Lagos State Law Reform Commission, Visiting Professor at Babcock University, and Chancellor of Lagos State University. He has authored numerous papers on arbitration, mergers and acquisitions, and other areas of law, demonstrating both scholarly and practical expertise.

His legal practice encompasses mergers and acquisitions, complex foreign currency financing, infrastructure projects, transformative commercial arrangements, dispute resolution, and law reform initiatives. He has advised across multiple sectors, including financial services, energy, telecommunications, consumer products, and transport. Notable engagements include advising on the Lagos State Red Line metro project, pioneering IPP financings, major corporate spin-offs and IPOs, Nigeria’s first Eurobond for First Bank, and high-profile arbitration and tax structuring matters.

Professor Elias is a Fellow of the Energy Institute and the Chartered Institute of Taxation, and a member of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators (UK). His combination of academic excellence and landmark transactional experience has established him as a leading authority in Nigerian and international corporate law.