Women in Business: Janet Febisola Adeyemi

Janet Febisola Adeyemi is the current President of Women in Mining in Nigeria, an affiliate of International Women in Mining. She also served on the Strategic Development and Policy Implementation Committee of the 2016 Governor-elect of Ondo State.

She is part of a broad civil society network coordinating an intervention in the recent South Kaduna crisis. She notably served in Nigeria national House of Representative, Executive Board Member of ICRC, Senior Special Assistant to the Presidency on National Assembly Matters, Chairman of Ondo State Cocoa Industry, amongst other advisory committees and national developmental agendas.

During her term in the National Assembly, she served as Chairman on Irrigation, Flood and Erosion Control, subcommittee Chairman for Solid Minerals and Water Resources. She sponsored/ co-sponsored 15 bills enacted as law amongst several other initiative bills despite serving as a member of a minority political party. She declared her intention to run for senator of Ondo South District under All Progressives Congress (APC) on 17 September 2018.

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Adeyemi serves on the boards of several non-governmental organisations, as a consultant to many bilateral and multilateral developmental organisations including World Bank and the United Nations, as well as many statewide committee developmental initiatives. She has organised several environmental-issue led workshops/conferences sponsored by Federal Environmental Protection Agency (FEPA), United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO), United Nation Development Program (UNDP), Federal Ministry of Environment, amongst many others.

She served on the committee for the creation of Nigeria Delta Development Commission (NDDC); planning committee on the flooding of River Niger; committee on the development of Water Resources Management and production of a draft bill on the conjunctive use of water in Nigeria; committee on security of lives and property (in curbing the effects of armed bandits from the Niger Republic); committee member on Police Equipment Trust Fund; committee member of Issue of Climate Change; Small Hydropower Project Implementation in Nigeria; Advocacy for Gender Parity in Nigeria; United Nations National Consultative Group on Electoral Reforms in Nigeria; Affirmation Action Committee of the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs.

Adeyemi was elected to the House of Representative for Ile-oluji/oke-igbo constituency in 1998. She served as author of several bills and worked across party lines on multiple occasions. She was regarded as a bridge builder as a result of her ability to work well with other political party members despite representing a minority political party.

She was known as an advocate for developmental agendas and gender equality; she sponsored the Circumcision of Women (Prohibition) Bill in 2000, which attracted many western scholars that led to the supervision of a doctorate thesis by a Canadian Scholar.