Atolagbe was admitted to the Nigerian Defence Academy as a member of the 34th Regular Combatant Course and commenced cadet training on 4 July 1983.

He was commissioned on 28 June 1986, into the Nigerian Army Infantry Corps and was posted as a platoon commander to the 1 Airmobile Battalion in Port Harcourt, Nigeria.

He was the Force HQ focal point for the implementation processes of the DOHA Document for Peace in Darfur and UNAMID.

He was a military expert for the ECOWAS/AU Review and Lessons Learned Panel of the ECOWAS Mission in AFISMA (Mali) in 2014, which was held in Akosoumbo, Ghana.

[9] In 2017, Atolagbe was a member of Nigeria's delegation to the ECOWAS CDS Meetings in Abuja and Accra for the review of mission mandates in Guinea-Bissau and Mali respectively.

Prior to that, he served as Executive Officer and Chief of Staff for the Ceasefire Commission of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA) and organized regular meetings of the Ceasefire Commission, mediation, and negotiation among the UN Mission and the parties to the conflict in Ouagadougou and Bamako.

In 2022, he was part of the UN delegation to the African Union Policy Conference on Promoting the Peace, Security, and Development Nexus in Tangier, Kingdom of Morocco[12] during which he proposed the inclusion of military personnel in future peace, security, and development discourse in order to have a more robust deliberation on the subject matter.