The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has released the final list of 3,852 successful candidates for its 2024/2025 recruitment exercise and announced plans to make recruitment an annual exercise beginning from 2026.
The Comptroller-General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, announced this on Tuesday while addressing journalists at the Service headquarters.
He said the successful candidates comprise 1,275 officers recruited into the Superintendent Cadre, 367 into the Inspectorate Cadre, and 2,210 into the Customs Assistant Cadre, bringing the recruitment exercise, which began in December 2024, to a close.
Adeniyi apologised to applicants and their families over the delay in concluding the exercise, attributing it to the large volume of applications, extensive verification processes and personnel changes within the Service.
According to him, the NCS received 573,680 applications for the 3,852 available positions, translating to an overall success rate of 0.67 per cent, or about one successful candidate for every 148 applicants.
“The exercise has taken longer than any of us intended. 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,” he said.
He explained that all applicants underwent application screening, computer-based examinations and verification of credentials against the national identity database before the final list was compiled.
“Where a record did not reconcile, we went back and checked it again. Successful candidates will now proceed to physical and medical assessment, and to a final review at Board level,” Adeniyi added.
The Customs boss said applicants into the Inspectorate Cadre faced the highest level of competition, with 128,604 candidates competing for 367 vacancies, representing about one successful applicant for every 350 candidates.
For the Superintendent Cadre, 276,995 applications were received for 1,275 positions, while 168,081 candidates applied for the 2,210 Customs Assistant positions.
Adeniyi said all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory were represented in the recruitment exercise, adding that each state received an equal allocation of 105 positions across the three cadres, while the FCT received 72 positions in line with the Federal Character principle.
He said women accounted for 839 successful candidates, representing 21.8 per cent of the intake, slightly higher than their share of total applications.
According to him, the median age of successful candidates is 26 years, with nearly three-quarters of those recruited below the age of 30.
Adeniyi also announced that the Service would discontinue its previous pattern of conducting recruitment exercises after several years and instead adopt a yearly recruitment schedule.
“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,” he said.
He disclosed that the 2026 recruitment exercise would commence later this year and is expected to be completed within a single calendar year.
“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.
The Comptroller-General urged successful applicants to await official communication through the contact details provided during registration and warned members of the public against paying money to anyone for recruitment.
“Recruitment into the Nigeria Customs Service is free. No candidate has paid, and no candidate should pay, any person or group for a place on this list. Anyone who solicits payment on our behalf is a criminal and should be reported to the Service and the security agencies,” he concluded.
