Customs’ pre-exam portal for recruitment crashes due to ‘high traffic’

Some applicants shortlisted for the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) recruitment were unable to partake in the agency’s pre-exam exercise on Monday as customs portal crashed.

The online exercise, designed to help candidates familiarise themselves with the system ahead of the actual computer-based test (CBT), returned multiple error messages — including “gateway time-out” and “500 internal server error” — leaving many unable to log in.

On Monday, several candidates took to X to express frustration over the glitches.

Some said they had been trying for hours without success, while others questioned the agency’s preparedness.

A user, Dr Terrific, described the experience as “horrendous,” adding that the system had displayed error messages since the scheduled 3pm start time.

“Nigerian Customs service pre – CBT has displayed horrendous error messages since 3pm set for the exams. Been trying to set the platform up for someone, n it is just an odious outcome! Fix this, and let no candidate take the fall for your failings,” he said.

Another user, named Joe_Akir, complained that he was unable to access the pre-exam portal, as it kept returning a “500 Internal Server Error” message.

In the same vein, a user identified as Musty, said the situation showed “how unprepared” the recruitment platform was for a national exercise.

“This is what we’re facing during the Nigeria Customs pretest In 2025, how is a national recruitment portal this unprepared?” he said.

“Thousands of applicants are stuck, frustrated, and unheard. Please fix this We deserve a fair process.”

‘PORTAL EXPERIENCING HIGH TRAFFIC’

Acknowledging the glitches in a post on its official X page, NCS attributed the difficulty to heavy traffic on the portal, urging applicants to keep trying.

“The service is aware of the current issue with the site; we’re actively experiencing high traffic which may cause temporary inaccessibility,” the agency said.

“Kindly keep trying while our team works tirelessly to resolve the issue.”

However, some applicants argued that “trying tirelessly” had yielded the same server errors for hours, insisting the process was unfair.

Prince Okodi wondered about the validity of the exercise, saying: “We have been trying tirelessly too, yet the same response from the server feeds. What do we do, what’s the validity of the pre-test?”

Another candidate, identified as Bifsy, lamented the time wasted.

“We have been trying since 3pm, so meaning we keep trying even till midnight. No sleep be that,” he said.

A user, Ajeh, questioned the credibility of the main examination if the trial run was already riddled with glitches.

Uthman Abdulgaf4 also said he had tried to access the portal for five hours, from 3pm to 8pm, without success.

“It’s not going through,” he said.

Baffah urged the customs service to reschedule the test, arguing that it was unreasonable to keep applicants waiting for hours, particularly those relying on cybercafés.

“The best thing u can do is to reschedule, you can’t keep people sitting for 5hrs, I believe 90% have move on with their daily stuff, there’s high percentage of people that went to the cafes and you think those cafe will keep waiting for them? Please kindly reschedule,” he said.

On September 10, NCS said it received 573,523 applications during the first phase of its ongoing recruitment exercise.

Customs had said the second stage — a CBT — will be held online from September 14 to 21, 2025, adding that a pre-test session would be held two days before the main CBT to familiarise candidates with the application.