Shortlisted candidates in the ongoing recruitment exercise by the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) have made allegations of fraud in the processes leading to the interview session.

This is even as there are rumblings within the Service by officers over the alleged faulty processes of the exercise which, they lamented, was contracted out to a consultant.

Only a few days ago, the Service advertised that it had shortlisted candidates for interview, which held on Thursday nationwide.
However, it was observed that the Service failed to publish the full list of the shortlisted candidates and their centres for the interview in line with what was considered best practice.
Rather, the Service reportedly insisted that those shortlisted would be contacted via their personal emails on their centres for the exercise.

Consequently, several persons out of about 120,000 candidates that were said to have been shortlisted for the interview, from about 180,000 applicants that visited the recruitment portal to enrol, waited endlessly until the early morning of Thursday, January 16, 2020, when the interview was slated, before they could get a mail.
Some candidates who spoke with Daily Independent in Abuja feared that they might be short-changed as they may not be able to meet up with the timing.
They disclosed that since the publication, they had been glued to their email inboxes to know if they were shortlisted.

They said they had almost lost hope that they would be invited only to get mails late on Wednesday night and the wee hours of Thursday.
A lady who simply gave her name as Amarachi, who ought to have attended the interview at a state in the South East, weeping profusely, told Daily Independent that she got a mail on Wednesday night and did not know how to make it to the state for the exercise.
Another, a male named Ogar, who was to attend the exercise in Makurdi, Benue State, also complained of receiving a late night mail, which made him set out on the road, taking the risk in the attempt to get to Makurdi early on Thursday morning for the interview billed for 7a.m.

It was gathered that several others who suffered this fate scrambled to travel on night buses, with fears that they might not meet up with the 7a.m time of the interview, while other candidates practically sourced funds to access early morning flights just to attend the interview.

Those who spoke with Daily Independent criticised the exercise as full of flaws, saying that the late night mails were intentional and calculated to deprive several persons from attending the interview, so as to promote fraudulent replacement of names.
They criticised the Service for refusing to publish their names as done in previous recruitment, where all the names of the shortlisted candidates and their centres were published in some national dailies, days before the interview, and afterwards, names of the successful candidates in the interview were also published.

They feared that the refusal to publish these names was the beginning of fraudulent strategies to short-change candidates, as there would be no evidence to prosecute illegal replacements of candidates in the recruitment process.
On their parts, officers of the Service were said to be unhappy with this sad development, attributing it to the insistence of the CGC to contract the recruitment out to an external agent to handle.
Sources said that the officers were worried about wrong persons being recruited for the Service through a process which they alleged was not thorough.

Several months back, in 2019, while kicking off the process, the Comptroller General of Customs (CGC), Col. Hameed Ali (rtd), had through his representative, an acting Deputy Comptroller General (DCG), Human Resources Development, Sanusi Umar, during a briefing at the Customs Headquarters in Abuja, said that the processes would be free and fair and comply with the federal character principle.

“We are actively engaged with the commission to ensure that the process will earn a certificate of compliance on merit,” the CGC had said.
The recruitment was said to be conducted to fill 800 spaces in the support staff for Superintendent Cadre, while 2,400 spaces would go for Inspectors and Customs Assistant Cadre in the General Duty category.

https://www.independent.ng/candidates-allege-fraud-in-customs-recruitment-exercise/


lalasticlala

Free and fair is all we wanted

The Recruitment should be scrapped.

Scam Customs.

Interview notice not sent at least one week in advance smarks of FRAUD

Scam everywhere

This should be in frontpage na..

How can I travel from Lagos to Bayelsa in less than 7 hours of seeing the mail.

Lalasticlala

I agree.ndlea did same

I don't know why they keep asking people to go to their region for tests, as if they don't have all the details in their database.
why not allow people to write the tests in their state of residence?

People wl pay thousands to & fro for tests, interviews, without any transport allowance, & at the end, they'll b replaced by those who never applied for the job... like NPA does

But according to the shortlisted candidates, they received the email earlier though there is a fresh Custom scam e-mail.. Very organised crime as they asked candidates to pay N3,500 online

Army arrangement

Customs recruitment like any other FG job Is by leg.
If you don't have leg, don't apply.....my position might be unpopular but it's the bitter truth...Even if they shortlisted u for interview and u don't have leg, don't go...All this try ur luck, try ur luck....

But is it going to be conducted again? Or we should forget about it. For those that missed the test ?