By Sabiu Abdullahi
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has disclosed that it received an overwhelming 573,519 applications for its 2024/2025 recruitment exercise within just one week of opening the application portal.
This announcement follows the Federal Government’s recent approval of 3,927 new recruitments for the service.
The Minister of Finance, Mr. Olawale Edun, had earlier revealed that the government had authorized the recruitment, which aimed to strengthen the workforce of the NCS.
Providing an update, the NCS spokesperson, Abdullahi Maiwada, gave a detailed breakdown of the applications submitted for both general duty and support staff positions, spanning multiple ranks.
“I want to break down the number of people that applied. We have two categories of officers: we have the support staff who are professionals, and we have the general duty.
“For the general duty, we have three categories of ranks. For the general duty under the superintendent cadre, we have 249,218,000 candidates who applied. Under the superintendent cadre support staff, we have 27,722,000 with HNDs and university degrees.
“For the inspector cadres, those expected to apply with their National Certificate for Education (NCE) or National Diploma, we have 115,634 applying for the general duty, and for support staff, we have 12,952.
“As for the customs assistants, these are those who are supposed to come in with secondary school certificates.
“There are two categories: those who have basic five-credit results with Maths and English, and those without Maths and English. For the general duty, we have 153,593,000, while for the support staff, we have 14,400,” Maiwada explained.
The recruitment exercise has drawn significant public attention due to the sheer number of applicants vying for the limited positions, highlighting the competitive nature of government employment in Nigeria.