Prof. Albert Alos passed away in Lagos on 5 September 2026, at the age of 86. He was one of the small pioneer group of numeraries who first brought Opus Dei to Nigeria, and he went on to spend nearly sixty years in the country, quietly living out that vocation through a long and remarkable career in education.
Albert was born in Barcelona, Spain, on 17 September 1939. He trained as an electrical engineer and completed his doctorate in 1966. Not long after, at a request of St. Josemaría Escrivá, the founder of Opus Dei, he agreed to travel to Nigeria to help start the Work there. He liked to say the decision combined a sense of adventure with something much deeper: a genuine call. He first spent some months in Nairobi, Kenya, before making his way to Lagos in October 1967, aged 28, just as the Civil War was breaking out — and he simply never left, becoming part of the small founding group there alongside Fr. Joseph Gabiola and Jeremy White.
His professional life unfolded almost entirely in Nigerian universities. He taught at the University of Ife, then the University of Lagos, and later the University of Ibadan, where he became Professor and Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering, helping bring the programme up to full professional accreditation. In 1993 his path turned toward management education: he became founding Dean and Director General of Lagos Business School, and later led the process that transformed LBS into the first school of what would become Pan-Atlantic University, serving as its pioneer Vice-Chancellor. After becoming Professor Emeritus at LBS, he remained involved in education through the Ikota Educational Foundation, helping pioneer Whitesands School in Lagos, and Hillrange Secondary School for Boys and Roseville Secondary School for Girls in Enugu. Earlier this year, LBS honoured his contribution by launching the Professor Albert Alos Endowed Chair in Strategic Management. In 2022, in recognition of a life spent in service to the country, he was granted Nigerian citizenship.
Through all of this, Albert lived his vocation as a numerary simply, in the middle of ordinary work — teaching, building institutions, forming younger colleagues and students — rather than apart from it. He often spoke of a personal encounter with St. Josemaría as a young man, who encouraged him to stay faithful and trust in God's will, an encounter he carried with him for the rest of his life. He later wrote Sowing the Seed, a personal record of Opus Dei's early years in Nigeria, so that the story of those first beginnings would not be forgotten. Something of that same spirit — the conviction that ordinary work, done well, can be a path to holiness — runs through the Christian inspiration of both Lagos Business School and Pan-Atlantic University.
Albert had asked to be buried in Nigeria, the country he loved and served for fifty-nine years. We thank God for his life, for his faithfulness to his vocation, and for the legacy he leaves behind in the many people he formed, and we commend his soul to God's mercy.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon him. May he rest in peace.