[2] He received his secondary education at the Church Missionary Society Grammar School and Igbobi College in Lagos.

[3] He married Ganiat Yetunde Fowosere, and the couple would have five children together (three sons, including Olufemi Elias a lawyer, and two daughters).

[3] While working at the Nigerian Railway, Elias became an external student of the University of London, and later he passed the intermediate examinations for the BA and LLB degrees.

As this was during World War II, with London the target of frequent bomb attacks, he spent some time at Cambridge's Trinity College.

[5][6] In 1951, Elias was awarded a UNESCO Fellowship to undertake research into the legal, economic, and social problems of Africa.

[1] Elias moved from Manchester to Oxford in 1954, when he became the Oppenheimer Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Nuffield College and Queen Elizabeth House.

He was instrumental in organizing courses in government, law, and social anthropology and in establishing the African Studies Department.

He also helped to draft the charter of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), and its Protocol of Mediation, Conciliation and Arbitration.

[11] Elias also represented the OAU and Nigeria before the International Court of Justice in the proceedings concerning the status of Namibia.

A few months later (in October 1975), he was elected by the General Assembly and the Security Council of the United Nations to the International Court of Justice at The Hague.