Customs to Begin Annual Recruitment as 3,852 Nigerians Secure Jobs

The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has announced a major overhaul of its recruitment process, declaring that future recruitment exercises will now be conducted annually, even as it unveiled the final list of 3,852 successful candidates for the 2024/2025 exercise from a pool of 573,680 applicants.

The Comptroller-General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, disclosed this on Tuesday during a press briefing at the service headquarters in Abuja, describing the just-concluded exercise as one of the most competitive in the history of the agency and assuring unsuccessful applicants that another opportunity would come before the end of the year.

Adeniyi said the service was abandoning its previous irregular recruitment model in favour of a predictable yearly process aimed at improving manpower planning and ensuring timely replacement of retiring personnel.

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According to Punch, “The Nigeria Customs Service is moving to an annual recruitment cycle. Recruitment will no longer be an occasional event undertaken every several years. It will be a standing, predictable, yearly process,” the NCS boss said.

He added, “The 2026 Recruitment Exercise will open later this year, and it is my firm intention that it will be completed within a single calendar year, from advertisement to final list.”

The Comptroller-General explained that the systems, screening architecture and verification framework developed during the 2024/2025 recruitment would make future exercises faster and more efficient.

“The systems, the screening architecture and the verification processes built during this exercise now exist, and they will not have to be built again,” he said.

He added: “The delays of this cycle were in significant part the cost of constructing that machinery. That cost has now been paid.”

Announcing the outcome of the recruitment exercise, Adeniyi said 3,852 candidates were offered employment across the service’s three entry cadres, comprising 1,275 officers in the Superintendent Cadre, 367 in the Inspectorate Cadre and 2,210 in the Customs Assistant Cadre.

He apologised to applicants and their families for the prolonged recruitment process, which lasted 20 months from December 2024 to August 2026.

“Let me begin with the matter uppermost in the minds of many of the young Nigerians who applied, and of their families. This exercise has taken longer than any of us intended.”

He continued, “On behalf of the Service, I offer my sincere apologies to every applicant who has waited, and to the parents and guardians who waited with them. That wait was real, and I do not diminish it.”

Adeniyi attributed the delay to the unprecedented number of applications, extensive verification processes and administrative changes within the service.

“I owe you an explanation rather than an excuse. Several factors extended the timeline. The volume alone was extraordinary: the Service received 573,680 applications for 3,852 places. Every one of those applications had to be received, verified and assessed,” he said.

He noted that every successful applicant passed through application screening, computer-based tests and verification against the national identity database before making the final list.

The Customs boss described the recruitment as highly competitive, revealing that only 0.67 per cent of applicants secured employment, equivalent to one successful candidate out of every 148 applicants.

He said the Superintendent Cadre attracted 276,995 applications for 1,275 vacancies, while the Inspectorate Cadre received 128,604 applications for 367 positions, making it the most competitive category. The Customs Assistant Cadre recorded 168,081 applications for 2,210 available slots.

Addressing unsuccessful applicants, Adeniyi urged them not to lose hope.

“I want to speak directly to the more than 560,000 Nigerians who applied and whose names are not on this list. You were not rejected; you were unlucky in a field of extraordinary competition.”

He added, “Many of you met every requirement the Service set. There were simply not enough places. I encourage you to remain engaged with the Service, to keep your credentials current, and to apply again. As I will explain shortly, the next opportunity is not years away.”

Adeniyi also disclosed that the recruitment strictly complied with the Federal Character principle, with all 36 states receiving equal allocations, while the Federal Capital Territory received 72 slots under the applicable formula.

He added that women accounted for 839 successful candidates, representing 21.8 per cent of the total intake, slightly exceeding their share of the total applications received.