Albert Alós

Professor Albert Alós Rovira was a Spanish-born Nigerian engineer, academic and Opus Dei missionary who helped build modern management education in Nigeria. He died in Lagos on 5 September 2026 at the age of 86, days before his 87th birthday. Pan-Atlantic University, which he served as pioneer vice-chancellor, and Lagos Business School, which he founded as dean, announced his death with tributes to his leadership and integrity.

Alós was born in Barcelona on 17 September 1939. He studied electrical engineering at the University of Bilbao and completed his doctorate in 1966. After a brief period teaching in Kenya at Strathmore College and the University of Nairobi, he moved to Nigeria in 1967 on a one-year UNESCO contract to help establish an electrical engineering department at the University of Ife (now Obafemi Awolowo University), arriving during the Nigerian Civil War. He later said he had also come to begin missionary work for Opus Dei, and he became one of the earliest members of the Work in the country.

In the 1970s he taught electrical engineering at the University of Lagos, where he helped set up the Control Engineering Laboratory and worked with the Helmbridge Study Centre in Surulere. He was made a professor at Lagos in 1983, then moved the same year to the University of Ibadan as professor and head of the Department of Electrical Engineering, where he helped bring the programme to COREN accreditation standards. He stopped teaching engineering in 1992 and turned fully to management education.

With other colleagues linked to Opus Dei he helped found Lagos Business School, which opened in 1991. From July 1993 he served as its first general director and founding dean, shaping a school aimed at international standards while remaining relevant to African business. After government approval in 2002 for what became Pan-Atlantic University, he led the incorporation of LBS into the new university and served as one of its first vice-chancellors, laying foundations for programmes and an ethos of ethical leadership. Beyond the campus he supported secondary schools, study centres and the Institute for Industrial Technology, and wrote books including The Pains and Gains of Growth, Sowing the Seed on early Opus Dei in Nigeria, and Not by Chance: Memories of Lagos Business School (2025).

The Nigerian Academy of Engineering gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015. In March 2026 Lagos Business School established the Professor Albert Alos Endowed Chair in Strategic Management in his honour. He became a Nigerian citizen in 2022. Colleagues remembered him as a visionary educator and institution builder whose work influenced generations of leaders across Nigeria and Africa.