By JKNewsMedia
REGULAR RECRUITMENT into the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) will now take place every year following a policy change announced with the release of the final list of successful candidates for the 2024 and 2025 recruitment exercise.
JKNewsMedia.com reports that the Comptroller General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, announced the decision during a press briefing at the service headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday.
He said the new policy would create a predictable manpower planning system that would allow the service to replace retiring officers promptly while giving young Nigerians regular opportunities to join the organisation.
Adeniyi said the service had moved away from a recruitment model that required applicants to wait several years before another exercise was conducted.
He said the new structure would make recruitment a continuous process, with the 2026 recruitment exercise expected to begin later this year.
He added that the Nigeria Customs Service now had the systems, screening framework and verification processes required to conduct future recruitment exercises more efficiently.
“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.
“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.”
Adeniyi said the lengthy process experienced during the 2024 and 2025 recruitment exercise resulted largely from the need to establish a robust recruitment architecture capable of supporting future exercises.
He said the service invested time and resources in building the framework and added that future recruitment exercises would benefit from the structures already in place.
“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 delays of this cycle were in significant part the cost of constructing that machinery. That cost has now been paid.”
Adeniyi said the annual recruitment model would benefit both the service and prospective applicants by improving workforce planning and reducing uncertainty among young Nigerians seeking employment.
He said the approach would enable the service to plan for manpower gaps arising from retirements and other exits instead of waiting until shortages occurred before recruiting.
“An annual cycle serves the Service and the applicant equally. It allows us to plan our manpower against known retirements rather than in reaction to them,” he said.
“And it means that a young Nigerian who is unsuccessful this year knows precisely when the next opportunity arrives, rather than waiting in uncertainty for an announcement that may be years in coming,” he stated.
While also disclosing that the announcement followed the conclusion of the 2024 and 2025 recruitment exercise, during which 3,852 candidates received appointments across the service’s three entry cadres; Adeniyi added that the successful candidates comprise 1,275 recruits into the Superintendent Cadre, 367 into the Inspectorate Cadre and 2,210 into the Customs Assistant Cadre.
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