Nigeria Customs Recruitment Portal Crashes During Pre-Test Amid Heavy Traffic

The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) faced backlash on Monday after its pre-examination portal for recruitment crashed, leaving many applicants unable to participate in the exercise.

The online session, meant to help candidates get familiar with the system ahead of the computer-based test (CBT), was plagued by errors ranging from “gateway time-out” to “500 internal server error.” Many shortlisted applicants reported being unable to log in despite repeated attempts.

Frustrated candidates took to social media platform X to vent their concerns. Some described the process as “horrendous” and questioned the agency’s preparedness for a national recruitment exercise of such scale. One user, Dr Terrific, said the system had shown error messages from the 3pm start time, while another, identified as Musty, argued that the glitches reflected poorly on the credibility of the process.

The Customs Service acknowledged the issues in a statement on its official X page, attributing the disruptions to heavy traffic on the portal. The agency assured applicants that its team was working to resolve the problem and urged them to keep trying. However, many candidates insisted they had spent hours attempting to log in without success, with some calling for the exercise to be rescheduled.

One applicant, Baffah, pointed out that many candidates relied on cybercafés and could not be expected to wait indefinitely. Others warned that if the trial run was this problematic, the main examination risked facing even bigger challenges.

NCS had earlier disclosed that it received 573,523 applications in the first phase of its recruitment. It announced that the second stage — the CBT — would run online between September 14 and 21, with a pre-test scheduled two days before to help applicants practice.