The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) faced backlash on Monday after its recruitment pre-examination portal crashed, preventing thousands of shortlisted applicants from participating in the exercise.
The online session, designed to help candidates familiarise themselves with the system ahead of the main computer-based test (CBT), was marred by repeated error messages such as “Gateway Time-Out” and “500 Internal Server Error.”
From the scheduled 3 p.m. start time, many candidates struggled unsuccessfully to log in.
By evening, frustration had spilled onto social media platform X, where applicants shared their experiences.
One user, Dr Terrific, described the process as “horrendous,” lamenting that the platform had failed since the exam was meant to begin. Another candidate, Joe_Akir, said every attempt to log in ended with a “500 Internal Server Error” message.
“Thousands of applicants are stuck, frustrated, and unheard,” wrote a user identified as Musty, questioning the NCS’s preparedness for a national recruitment exercise.
In its response, the Customs Service acknowledged the challenges, attributing them to heavy traffic on the portal. “We’re actively experiencing high traffic which may cause temporary inaccessibility,” the agency said in a post on X, assuring candidates that its team was working to resolve the issue.
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But many applicants argued that the explanation was insufficient. Prince Okodi asked what would happen to those who had been trying for hours without success.
Bifsy complained about wasted time, saying: “We have been trying since 3 p.m. — does it mean we keep trying until midnight?”
Others, like Baffah, called for the exercise to be rescheduled, noting that many candidates were using cybercafés and could not afford to wait indefinitely.
The pre-test was meant to precede the main CBT scheduled for September 14–21, part of a recruitment process that began earlier this month after NCS announced it had received over 573,000 applications.
With Monday’s glitches, questions are now being raised about the credibility of the actual examination, and whether the Customs Service is adequately prepared to handle the sheer volume of candidates in the next stage.