The Federal Character Commission has taken the Nigeria Customs Service and its Comptroller-General, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, to the Federal High Court in Abuja over alleged irregularities in the Service’s recruitment process.
In a four-count charge filed on Thursday, the commission accuses Customs of withholding recruitment records, failing to allow monitoring and continuing recruitment and training after being told to suspend the exercise.
The FCC says it requested the nominal rolls for the 2025 recruitment in a letter dated March 25, 2026, but Customs did not provide them. It also alleges Adeniyi allowed the Service to ignore the request.
The charge further claims that Customs failed to submit relevant stages of the 2025/2026 recruitment to the commission’s monitoring between September 14 and October 7. The FCC says the Service also continued with recruitment and training despite receiving a suspension directive dated October 23.
A separate count concerns recruitment guidelines. The commission alleges that Customs did not provide clear eligibility criteria or comprehensive guidelines, despite repeated requests made between January 30 and October 20. It says this left it unable to assess how vacancies were distributed across states and zones.
The FCC plans to call three witnesses and present 14 documents, including correspondence with Customs and a report on the Service. The charges were brought under the Federal Character Commission Act.
The court case comes amid a broader dispute over the 2024/2025 recruitment. The commission has questioned why some applicants who completed screening and medical checks were not invited to training, while others who were reportedly absent from the published final list received invitations.
Customs said 3,852 candidates were successful out of 573,680 applications. The final lists for the Superintendent, Inspectorate and Customs Assistant cadres were published between July 28 and 30, 2026.
The Service later said it found screening issues involving 397 applicants and began reviewing complaints from candidates who were shortlisted but later disqualified. On October 19, Adeniyi ordered a case-by-case reassessment. Customs has said that shortlisting did not guarantee enlistment.