Profile of Princess Adefunmilayo Tejuosho
The transformative leader for the month of February is PRINCESS ADEFUNMILAYO TEJUOSO (Member Lagos State House of Assembly, representing Mushin Constituency 1).
Born in Lagos State to the family of Ademola Smith. She had her primary education at University of Lagos Staff School, Akoka, and Queens College Lagos and completed her secondary education in West Virginia. After high school, she attended West Virginia University, where she studied Biology. After her service year she went to the University of Buckingham to study law. She did her LLM and PhD in the University of Lagos. After her call to bar, she joined the services of Ademola Odunsi & Co.
LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCE In 1996, she was a member of the Grassroots Democratic Movement under the short-lived Abacha administration and was a House of Representative candidate for the party. At the beginning of the fourth republic, she joined Alliance for Democracy. In 2003, she was voted into the Lagos state House of Assembly to represent Mushin Constituency 1. At the completion of her first term, she contested again in the April 2007 general polls and she won conveniently a second term to represent her constituency, Mushin 1 and she emerged the Deputy Speaker of the sixth assembly at its inauguration and she became the second female legislator to be elected Deputy Speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly. She won a third term at the April 2011 elections and also the 2015 election, thus making her the only female to be elected four times consecutively. She unsuccessfully contested for the position of speaker of the Lagos State House of Assembly in 2015.
In the House of Assembly, she sponsored the passage of the Domestic Violence Bill into law (as a private member bill), in the fifth assembly at that time she was the deputy chief whip and chairman House Committee on Women affairs and Poverty Alleviation of the Lagos State House of Assembly. She also supported and contributed to the passage of other bills into law, spanning from Education, Health, Infrastructure, Youth Empowerment & Development Information, Security, Appropriation and the Child’s right law. She is also a member of the following. Economic Planning and Budget committee, Judiciary committee, Human Rights &Public Petitions and Women Affairs & Poverty Alleviation. Her constituency is sub-divided into; Alakara, Idi-Oro/Idi-Olowo, Baba Olosa, Ojuwoye, IIupeju, Olateju, Kayode/Fadeyi and Illupeju Industrial.
On women’s participation in politics she has this to say ““It’s about time we begin to talk about the affirmative action and 30 percent inclusion of women into elective and appointive leadership roles in this country. In fact it shouldn’t be 30 percent at all; it should be much more than that. We should encourage our women.”