The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has announced that it received a staggering 573,519 applications for its recently concluded 2024/2025 recruitment exercise, despite only 3,927 vacant positions being available.
The announcement comes a week after the recruitment portal was opened, following approval by the Minister of Finance, Mr. Olawale Edun, for the service to recruit new officers.
In an update on Tuesday, NCS spokesperson Abdullahi Maiwada provided a breakdown of the applications, revealing that they were divided into two main categories: general duty officers and support staff professionals.
“For the general duty under the superintendent cadre, we have 249,218 applicants,” Maiwada stated.
He further explained the applications under the support staff cadre, which include candidates with HNDs and university degrees, saying, “We have 27,722 applicants in this category.”
For the inspector cadres, intended for applicants with National Certificate for Education (NCE) or National Diploma, Maiwada said there were 115,634 applications for general duty and 12,952 applications for support staff.
Applications for Customs assistants, the entry-level category for candidates with secondary school certificates, were particularly high. “For the general duty, we have 153,593 applications, while the support staff category recorded 14,400 applications,” Maiwada noted.
