2021 Zamfara school kidnapping
2021 kidnapping of 279 schoolchildren in Jangebe Town, Zamfara, Nigeria
The Zamfara kidnapping (or Jangebe kidnapping) was the abduction of 279 female students aged between 10 and 17 during a raid by armed bandits on 26 February 2021. The kidnapping occurred at the Government Girls Science Secondary School, a boarding school in Jangebe, in Zamfara State, Nigeria. All hostages were released by the bandits on 2 March 2021, though claims vary as to the negotiation methods used by the Nigerian government in order to facilitate their release.
The incident was Nigeria's second school kidnapping in February 2021 and the third within three months, claiming 633 victims in total. The incident took place nine days after the Kagara kidnapping, when at least 42 hostages were taken from a school in Niger State. In December 2020, kidnappers abducted 344 schoolboys in Katsina State.
Background
Holding schoolchildren hostage for ransom has become fairly common in Nigeria. Armed criminal groups, described as "bandits" and labelled as terrorists by the Nigerian government, often carry out mass kidnappings of schoolchildren. This provides a steady source of income for these groups. Involving children also gains such groups publicity through notoriety, as well as restraint from harsh actions by the government.
“2021 Zamfara school kidnapping” enters the record as 2021 kidnapping of 279 schoolchildren in Jangebe Town, Zamfara, Nigeria. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Zamfara, school and kidnapping can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“2021 Zamfara school kidnapping” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Zamfara, school and kidnapping provides the most credible route into that argument.
The strongest evidence will usually combine a dated visual record with documents produced by the authority responsible for the place. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q105690895. Authority coordinates are 12.231, 6.069. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2021 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “2021 Zamfara school kidnapping” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.