The Nigeria Customs recruitment exams on October 2 plagued by design or the recruitment team was helpless?
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) held the CBT test for superintendent cadre on Thursday, October 2nd, 2025. Unfortunately, it was not without setbacks for ‘some’ candidates.
The negative reports had common complaints of the exam being plagued by the timing of some batches being shifted by hours. Notably, Batches B and C were moved to 2:00 PM and 5:00 PM respectively.
But this change in schedule was not even the problem for affected candidates. It was the server glitches, a challenge that has been persistent right from the pre-test. Then there was the “Rate Limited” issue as too many students were trying to access the exam portal at the same time. The servers blocked extra requests, which is an issue on the recruitment team’s side. This could have been fixed by increasing server capacity or managing traffic better. The issue had nothing to do with the candidates’ network connection. It also meant that thousands of candidates had to refresh or hit Ctrl+R every second. As a result, some were forced to bring in third party help, which meant unknowingly breaking a rule of the exam.
As for candidates getting logged out automatically, the NCS exam guide had earlier warned: “If a different face is detected, the system will automatically log you out,” among other rules. This may explain why some participants suddenly logged out automatically during the test.
Reports also surfaced of some Batch A morning candidates being able to retake the exams and resubmit later in the evening of Thursday.
Others complained that their exams were not submitted despite clicking Submit as instructed. On this matter, NCS clarified that such submissions were automatic. However, many candidates repeatedly saw “Internal server error. Please try again later” and “Invalid token” messages while attempting to submit.
More painful are reports of people losing their jobs due to the delays caused by the NCS exam.
Candidates said they had to stay off work longer than expected because of the rescheduled batches and portal issues. A lesson for future candidates, as some noted, is to take permission away from work on the exam date to avoid conflict with employers.
Meanwhile, NCS candidates on Level 08 and above may have subsequent exams after this one. Nigeriastartupact.ng’s take on the situation is that many candidates risk disqualification for simple rule violations such as not enabling microphone, webcam, background movement detection, or using a faulty laptop or desktop computer.
As we await the examination for the next cadre, we all hope that the NCS recruitment team has picked up lessons of improvement.
