Books in the shadow of guns: Insecurity, learning loss, and the credibility of educational assessment in Nigeria

On November 21, 2025, armed gunmen stormed St. Mary’s Catholic School in Papiri, abducting 303 students, some as young as five years old, and 12 teachers in what would become Nigeria’s single largest school kidnapping. Three days earlier, 25 schoolgirls had been seized from Government Girls Comp