If you are a Nigerian company importing menstrual products or the raw materials to produce them, you are paying import duties. Those duties then get folded into the cost of production, into the cost of goods, and eventually into the price on the shelf that Mama Adimchi in Rumuola market or Alimosho picks up and quietly puts back down because it’s too much this month.

And if you run a period care business in Nigeria (which I do) you are also paying company income tax like any other business. There is no carve-out that says: this company exists to solve a public health problem, so we’ll treat it differently. The Nigerian tax system does not distinguish between a business selling soft drinks and a business trying to make sure girls don’t miss school because they’re bleeding. We are taxed the same.

Now, I understand that a blanket “no tax on period businesses” policy would open complicated doors. I’m not naive about that. But it’s worth asking the question out loud: if we agree that menstruation is a biological reality and not a lifestyle choice, why does the business of managing it get treated like any other consumer goods trade? I know some people will argue that well, if we don’t tax pads then we shouldn’t tax other medications or medical devices that are of a non-aesthetic nature and I agree. We already don’t tax churches and NGO’s and those organizations make a ton of money. Let’s not even dive into the “profit-sharing” model conversation.

The irony is almost too much. We have decided, correctly, that pads should not carry VAT at the point of sale. But we have not asked what happens before the point of sale. The import duties, the operational taxes, the friction placed on the very companies trying to make access easier. Yes, the woman buying the pad doesn’t feel VAT. She does feel every cost that was quietly added before it reached her hands.

That’s the conversation Nigeria needs to have. Not just about what’s on the receipt. About everything that shaped the number on the receipt before she ever walked into that shop and how best to reduce it, hence making it more accessible.