On days when 16-year-old Odunayo (surname withheld) uses tissue paper instead of sanitary pads during her menstrual period, she stays away from school.

Odunayo, a secondary school student in Lagos State, skips school whenever she uses tissue paper to avoid the embarrassment of being stained in public.

Her main reason for using tissue is the high cost of sanitary pads.

“If I use tissue paper, I won’t be able to go to school because I will easily get stained,” she told FIJ on Wednesday.

Unlike Odunayo, Darasimi Fasinu, another teenage secondary school girl in Lagos, seems luckier when it comes to accessing sanitary pads. But even she feels the pressure. “Sanitary pads are too expensive,” Fasinu said.

READ ALSO: Happy International Women’s Day? Nigeria Has Nothing to Celebrate

“I use Dry Love, but if I can’t find that brand, I go for Soft Care or any other available one. Sometimes, I buy pads with my own money because my parents often complain about the cost. To avoid hearing the complaints repeatedly, I sometimes use my savings,” Fasinu disclosed.

When asked how she would feel if the government subsidised the cost of menstrual care products, she replied, “Relieved and happy.”

FIJ spoke to both girls on Menstrual Hygiene Day, observed annually on May 28 to raise awareness about period poverty.

According to UN Women, the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women, period poverty is the inability to afford and access menstrual products, sanitation, hygiene facilities, education and information to manage menstrual health.

At least 500 million women and girls worldwide lack access to menstrual products and adequate facilities for menstrual hygiene management (MHM), based on the estimation of the World Bank.

In 2021, Pauline Tallen, who was Nigeria’s Minister of Women Affairs, said more than 37 million adolescent girls and women of reproductive age in Nigeria lacked access to menstrual hygiene products due to high costs.

Four years later, millions of girls and women still cannot afford sanitary pads. And the reality is grimmer for schoolgirls like Odunayo who stay away from school while menstruating.

Over the years, gender advocates and stakeholders (here, here, here and here) have called for the free distribution of pads to schoolgirls and the removal of taxes on menstrual health products. Doing these would reduce the high cost of sanitary pads.

In 2020, locally manufactured sanitary towels and pads were some of the items added to the Value-Added Tax (VAT) exemption list under the Finance Bill 2019, signed by former president Muhammadu Buhari.

When the President Bola Tinubu-led administration proposed the 2024 tax reform bills, recently passed by the national assembly, locally manufactured sanitary towels, pads and tampons were equally exempted from VAT.

However, VAT waivers alone may not be enough to combat period poverty or the rising cost of menstrual health products.

To check how taxes are applied on some menstrual products in Nigeria, FIJ bought three brands of sanitary pads, which include Lilypad Maxi Comfort, Molped Maxi Thick and Aya Medium Comfy. Each costs N520, N1,050 and N1,385, respectively.

Based on the sales invoice, a 7.5 per cent VAT was applied to Lilypad and Aya. While the actual cost of both items, without the tax, was N1,772.09, VAT added N132.91 to the sum.

The product details on NAFDAC’s website show that Aya was manufactured in China by Beijing Beishute Maternity & Child Articles Co. Ltd, while the other two were made in Nigeria. Lilypad was manufactured by Fouani Nigeria Limited and Molped by Hayat Kimya Nigeria Ltd.

A 2024 story by FIJ detailed how many women and girls in Nigeria could no longer keep up with the high costs. So, they either abandon their favourite —often better — brand of sanitary pads or resort to using unsanitary items.

Due to the high prices, many women want the government to subsidise sanitary pads or make them free.

READ ALSO: How Nigerian Women Are Dumping Better Sanitary Pads Because of Austerity

For Betty Abah, an advocate for the rights of women and children and founder of CEE HOPE, a girl-child rights and development non-profit, the Nigerian government needs to do more than remove taxes on menstrual products that are manufactured locally.

She said the government must implement a policy for the free distribution of pads to public schools.

“Most of the materials used for sanitary products are imported, so the ones that are importing the products are still paying import tax. The government should follow in the steps of empathetic and citizen-responsive countries like Rwanda, and remove all taxes, whether VAT or import tax, to encourage manufacturers, to reduce the prices and make it more affordable,” Abah told FIJ.

WHAT IS THE MINISTRY OF WOMEN AFFAIRS DOING?

The Federal Ministry of Women Affairs, whose broad mandate focuses on gender and children’s issues, got N122,917,792,893 (N122 billion) in the 2025 budget allocation. Out of this sum, 94.7 billion goes to the ministry while N28.1 billion goes to the National Centre for Women Development.

FIJ found several empowerment and sensitisation programmes for women and girls in the budget, but there was no specific project on the subsidisation of sanitary pads. In one case, N100 million was allocated for the overhauling of elevators and installation of solar power for elevators, N100 million for a ministerial gender stakeholder sensitisation forum, N100 million for back-to-school initiative and N40 million for policy and guidelines on implementing social intervention services for women and children in Nigeria.

Another N100.1 million was budgeted for the commemoration and popularisation of international days for women and girls, and the national situation assessment and analysis of vulnerable children in Nigeria (survey) got N100 million as well, while N25 million was budgeted for promoting girl child education.

Except for a vague item titled “End Periodic Poverty Campaign” with a budget of N20 million, nowhere in the 17-page breakdown of the budget allocation did the ministry mention the phrases “menstrual hygiene”, “period poverty” or “sanitary pads”.

While speaking with FIJ on Wednesday during an event organised by her NGO for schoolgirls in Lagos in commemoration of the 2025 Menstrual Hygiene Day, Abah disclosed that some female students stay away from school for up to five days each month because they don’t have access to sanitary products.

“What we see every day is girls exempting themselves from school because they don’t have money. Their parents cannot afford to buy them sanitary products, and then they fall behind academically, which widens the educational gender gap,” Abah explained.

The gender advocate linked the challenge of Nigeria’s out-of-school children, the majority of whom are girls, to period poverty. As of 2024, Nigeria had 18.5 million out-of-school children, and 60 per cent of them were girls.

“It is embarrassing that Nigeria continues to have the highest number of out-of-school children in the world, predominantly girls. How do you even reconcile the fact that this is happening and the government is not making any moves as a matter of urgency to respond to such a glaring problem?” Abah said.

READ ALSO: Nigerian Women Fear Legalisation of Firearm Possession Could Cause a Spike in Femicides

“Removing VAT is not enough. They should remove all forms of taxation on sanitary products, either locally produced or imported, and they should implement the policy of free distribution to schools.”

Abah said Kenya had been distributing free sanitary pads for years, and emulating such in Nigeria would go a long way to help girls stay in school. FIJ found that Kenya repealed the value-added tax on pads and tampons in 2004. Then, in 2011, it began to set aside $3 million annually to distribute free sanitary pads in schools in low-income communities.

“Nigeria has all it takes to make the citizens comfortable. It’s not just political talk. There should be a national policy on menstrual hygiene management,” Abah added.

FIJ understands that menstrual hygiene management goes beyond access to sanitary materials. It also involves adequate sanitation facilities and menstrual health education.

The Ministry of Women Affairs, according to Abah, should have the political will to back up policies with action.

“They’ve had the committees on the national menstrual hygiene management for years now, but nothing has happened. The government should not feel cool about doing nothing about period poverty,” she said.

“If a country like Scotland can make a policy to provide sanitary products to women within the reproductive age bracket every month, why can’t Nigeria do it?”