“Let me begin with the matter uppermost in the minds of many of the young Nigerians who applied, and of their families. This exercise has taken longer than any of us intended. On behalf of the service, I offer my sincere apologies to every applicant who has waited, and to the parents and guardians who waited with them. That wait was real, and I do not diminish it.

I owe you an explanation rather than an excuse. Several factors extended the timeline. The volume alone was extraordinary: the service received 573,680 applications for 3,852 places. Every one of those applications had to be received, verified and assessed. The service also carried, over this same period, an unusually high rate of retirement and turnover among its senior and management cadre, which placed real strain on the administrative machinery that runs an exercise of this size”, Comptroller General of Customs, Dr. Adewale Bashir Adeniyi on the formal release of the final list of successful candidates for the 2024/2025 recruitment exercise recently.