Customs explains why shortlisted candidates await training invitations

The Nigeria Customs Service has said candidates whose names appeared on its published recruitment list are not automatically guaranteed appointment, explaining that final screening is still ongoing before successful applicants are admitted for training.

The clarification followed complaints by some candidates who claimed they successfully completed the Computer-Based Test, physical examinations and initial screening, accepted their appointments through the official recruitment portal and saw their names published as successful candidates, but had yet to receive invitations for training scheduled to commence on Friday.

The affected candidates, according to a report by SaharaReporters, include more than 500 applicants who said they had been left uncertain about their status after invitations to the training reportedly stopped on Monday.

Some of the candidates claimed they had resigned from their previous jobs and incurred other expenses after believing that their appointments had been secured

However, the Customs spokesman and Deputy Comptroller of Customs, Abdullahi Maiwada, told The PUNCH exclusively on Wednesday that the publication of a candidate’s name did not amount to a final appointment into the service.

Maiwada said candidates must pass the physical screening and other requirements before they can be admitted into the training college and eventually commissioned as officers.

“I will start my response first with a question. Did anyone who complained to you inform you that they have been issued an appointment letter? So that means the process is still ongoing. Secondly, the essence of screening is to have a physical examination of successful candidates.

Let me explain so that you would have proper context. The essence of screening is either for candidates to be screened in or screened out, and they are just simple issues. It is either you have not met the criteria to be offered an appointment letter into Customs or to be ushered into training college. If anyone fails this, they will be dropped,” he said.

The spokesman said age, academic credentials, medical fitness and drug use were among the requirements that could determine whether a candidate progressed to the next stage.

He explained, “Those criteria are simple. Age is very important. If your age is above the threshold, you will be disqualified. If there are inconsistencies in your credentials, you will be disqualified. If there are forgeries detected, you will be disqualified.

“If we see you with drugs, any element of drugs except tobacco and beer, you will be disqualified. If you have medical issues that wouldn’t warrant you to undergo that rigour, you would also be disqualified.”

Maiwada stressed that even admission into the training college would not make a candidate a Customs officer, saying applicants must successfully complete the training and satisfy academic, physical and character requirements before commissioning.

He said, “The fact that your name came out and you are invited for screening doesn’t qualify you to be a Customs officer. Even with that, you are going for training. And you will go for the training. It is when you pass the requirements that you will be commissioned as an officer. Anything before that, you are still not an officer.

“Someone can go to the Nigerian Defence Academy and still fail. It is not everyone who comes out who passes or is a flying lieutenant. And even if you find yourself in training college, you are still not a Customs officer. Until the day you pass out successfully and you are able to withstand all the rigours.

Academic exercises will be done, and you must come out well in character and learning. Exams will be conducted.”

The spokesman said the service could not justify spending public resources to train candidates who had already failed basic eligibility requirements. He said drug screening was particularly important because the Customs Service conducts annual drug tests for serving officers, regardless of rank.

“If someone is into drugs and he is disqualified, do we have to waste our resources taking him to training college before disqualifying him? No! These are criteria that are so simple. You have forgery and the like, and you want to be allowed into the system.

“If you see what we saw with medical records, you will be scared for this country. The rate at which boys are into drugs, you will be scared. Is this the future? The service runs drug tests for every officer every year, no matter your ranking. So if we can do that to persons in the system, what do you think we would do to persons outside it?” Maiwada said.

The ongoing controversy is linked to the Nigeria Customs Service’s 2024/2025 recruitment exercise, which began with an advertisement published on December 27, 2024.

The Service declared 3,927 vacancies across the Superintendent, Inspectorate and Customs Assistant cadres and received 573,680 applications.

After several stages of screening and verification, 3,852 candidates were selected, representing only 0.67 per cent of the applicants, or about one successful candidate for every 148 applicants.

The successful candidates comprised 1,275 Superintendents, 367 Inspectors and 2,210 Customs Assistants. The Service later conducted medical documentation and physical screening before inviting candidates who passed the subsequent stage for basic training scheduled to begin on October 9, 2026, at the Customs Training College.

Maiwada’s explanation means that candidates whose names appeared in the published list may still be subject to further verification before they receive final appointment letters, proceed through training and are eventually commissioned as Customs officers.