CUSTOMS SERVICE AND THE NATION WE MUST BUILD:

CUSTOMS SERVICE AND THE NATION WE MUST BUILD: 573,680 Applicants, 3,852 Jobs And One Chair Too ManyThe Young Must Ask Who Owns TomorrowBy Citizen Bolaji AkinyemiThere are moments when statistics cease to be numbers and become a mirror held before a nation.The Nigeria Customs Service has just given us such a mirror.According to the Service, 573,680 Nigerians applied for its 2024/2025 recruitment exercise. Only 3,852 were eventually selected. That means that for every one Nigerian who secured a place, approximately 148 others were left behind. The success rate was just 0.67 per cent. In the Inspectorate Cadre, the competition was even more brutal: 128,604 applicants competed for only 367 positions, roughly one position for every 350 applicants.The successful applicants have a median age of 26.That figure should make every Nigerian leader stop and think.These are not merely applicants. They are Nigeria’s future workforce. They are graduates, young professionals, children of families that have invested scarce resources in their education and young Nigerians searching for a pathway into productive citizenship.Yet while hundreds of thousands of young Nigerians are competing for a few thousand opportunities at the bottom and middle rungs of the institution, we continue to operate a national culture in which the top rung can be occupied beyond the originally contemplated tenure.This is why my objection to the extension of the tenure of the Comptroller General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, was never about the personality of Adeniyi.It was about the institution.It was about the principle.It was about succession.It was about whether a country that tells its young people that they are the leaders of tomorrow can continually postpone tomorrow.In July 2025, I took the Federal Government to court over the extension of the Customs Comptroller General’s tenure. The suit, filed at the Federal High Court in Lagos, challenged the legality of the extension and raised questions about due process, institutional governance and the right of Nigerians to a system governed by predictable rules rather than discretionary arrangements.I did not take that decision because I believed Adeniyi was incompetent.I took it because no individual should become more important than the institution he occupies.At the time, some well meaning Nigerians appealed to me to reconsider. I listened to them. I understood their concerns. But the fundamental question remained unanswered:If we genuinely believe in institutions, where do we draw the line between continuity and occupation?The Government subsequently extended Adeniyi’s tenure for another six months in June 2026, taking his tenure to February 2027.That development makes this conversation even more urgent.WHAT DOES THIS SAY TO THE 573,680?Imagine being one of the 573,680 Nigerians who applied.You were told to apply.You submitted your credentials.You prepared for the examination.You waited.You competed.You hoped.Eventually, 3,852 names emerged.More than 560,000 applicants did not make the list.The Customs Service has explained that the process was competitive and that recruitment was free. It has also announced plans for annual recruitment, which is welcome because institutions need predictable pathways for entry and progression.But there is another question we must ask.What happens when young Nigerians enter an institution and discover that the higher they climb, the narrower the space becomes because those above them refuse to make room?That is the real issue.Succession is not merely about retirement.Succession is about institutional oxygen.An institution that cannot renew itself eventually becomes an institution that consumes its own future.THE APPOINTMENT RACKETEERING MUST ENDI have said repeatedly that one of the greatest dangers to Nigeria’s future is the conversion of public appointment into a private patronage system.We have created a country where many Nigerians believe that qualification alone is not enough.You need to know somebody.Or somebody who knows somebody.Or somebody who can make a phone call.Or somebody who can put your name in the right room.That culture is destroying confidence in government.And I am not speaking theoretically.I am presently in the middle of a situation in which someone close to me gave a cousin of mine ₦2 million to help him secure an appointment into the immigration service.I mention this not to accuse any named individual of criminal conduct, but because the experience illustrates a national problem that Nigerians cannot continue to pretend does not exist.When public employment becomes something people believe they must pay to obtain, the institution has already suffered a moral injury.When young Nigerians begin to believe that their certificates, examinations and competence are secondary to connections and money, democracy becomes hollow.And when those who occupy the top of institutions are repeatedly given extensions instead of making room for succession, the message to the young becomes even more dangerous:Wait your turn, but your turn may never come.THIS IS WHY INSTITUTIONS MUST WORKThe only sustainable way to end appointment racketeering is not for the President to become a better distributor of patronage.It is to make patronage unnecessary.Institutions must work.Recruitment must be advertised.Criteria must be published.Examinations must be independently verifiable.Lists must be auditable.Appointments must follow established procedures.Vacancies must not become opportunities for political distribution.Tenure must have meaning.Retirement must have meaning.Succession must have meaning.And public appointments must not become a retirement home where the same generation continues to occupy the commanding heights while another generation waits outside the gate.This is not an argument against experience.Nigeria needs experience.Nigeria needs its elders.Nigeria needs the wisdom of those who have served the country before.But experience should be transferred, not perpetually occupied.The elder should become the mentor.The retiring officer should become the adviser.The experienced professional should become the teacher, consultant, researcher or custodian of institutional memory.The younger generation should be allowed to take responsibility.That is how nations reproduce leadership.RETIREMENT IS NOT REJECTIONWe must change our understanding of retirement.Retirement is not an insult.Succession is not disrespect.Making room for younger Nigerians is not an expression of hatred for older Nigerians.It is how every healthy institution survives.If a public servant is expected to retire under the rules of the civil service, we should ask why the same person can subsequently be brought back into public service through political appointment and occupy essentially the same institutional space from which retirement was supposed to create succession.That contradiction deserves a national conversation.The answer cannot simply be that the President has the power to appoint.The deeper question is whether every exercise of power strengthens or weakens the institution.THE CUSTOMS STATISTIC IS A WARNING TO YOUNG NIGERIANSThe 573,680 applicants should not be forgotten.The 560,000 who were not selected should not be left behind.Their number represents a generation.A generation looking for work.A generation looking for dignity.A generation looking for a reason to believe that Nigeria belongs to them too.The figure is also politically significant.The 560,000 Nigerians who competed unsuccessfully for a place in Customs represent about 2.24 per cent of all valid votes cast in the 2023 presidential election. They represent about 6.37 per cent of the votes cast for President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, 8.02 per cent of Atiku Abubakar’s votes and 9.18 per cent of Peter Obi’s votes.They are not a political party.They are not an electoral bloc.They are something more important:A generation searching for opportunity.And the median age of the successful Customs recruits, 26, tells us something else.Nigeria is already producing the people capable of carrying its institutions forward.The problem is not that there are no young Nigerians.The problem is that the system does not create enough structured pathways for them to inherit responsibility.This is why I am calling on Nigerians between 18 and 60 to begin a serious national conversation before 2027.Not a conversation about political parties.Not a conversation about ethnicity.Not a conversation about religion.A conversation about generational ownership of Nigeria.Ask every candidate for political office:What percentage of your appointments will go to qualified young Nigerians?What is your succession plan?How will you prevent public appointments from becoming political retirement homes?What institutional mechanisms will guarantee that recruitment is based on competence rather than connections?How will you protect young Nigerians from appointment racketeering?What will you do to ensure that the children of ordinary Nigerians can enter public service without knowing a powerful person?These questions should become part of the 2027 political conversation.I AM NOT AGAINST ADENIYILet me make this absolutely clear.My position is not personal.I have never argued that Bashir Adewale Adeniyi is incapable of performing his duties.The question is bigger than Adeniyi.It is bigger than Customs.It is bigger than President Tinubu.The question is whether Nigeria is prepared to build institutions that outlive the personalities who temporarily occupy them.If Adeniyi is good, then the institution should be good enough to survive his departure.If the institution cannot survive his departure, then the problem is not Adeniyi.The problem is the institution.And if the institution has no credible successor after the tenure of its head, then we have failed to build succession into the institution.That is the real indictment.THE YOUNG MUST NOT VOTE AGAINST THEIR OWN FUTUREThe young people of Nigeria must begin to understand the political power they possess.They are not merely voters to be mobilised during elections.They are the demographic majority.They are the workforce.They are the applicants.They are the entrepreneurs.They are the graduates.They are the parents raising the next generation.They are the citizens who will live longest with the consequences of today’s political decisions.Therefore, they must stop asking only:Who should I vote for?They must begin asking:What kind of Nigeria will my vote create?That is the beginning of Performance Democracy.Democracy cannot merely be about who wins an election.It must be about whether the system produces measurable opportunities, accountable institutions and a government that works for the majority.The 573,680 Customs applicants have given us a number.We must give that number a voice.It says:We are here.We are qualified.We are waiting.We want our turn.We do not want favours.We want a system.THE NATION WE MUST BUILDMy legal challenge to the Customs tenure extension was therefore never just about one Comptroller General.It was a small battle in a much larger struggle for institutional integrity.The same principle applies to Immigration.It applies to NAFDAC.It applies to the Police.It applies to the Armed Forces.It applies to the Civil Service.It applies to every regulatory agency and every public institution.The solution to Nigeria’s appointment racketeering is not simply to replace one beneficiary with another.It is to make the system incapable of dispensing opportunities as favours.We need institutions that function.We need transparent recruitment.We need predictable succession.We need enforceable tenure.We need merit.We need accountability.And above all, we need a generation of young Nigerians courageous enough to demand that tomorrow should no longer be permanently occupied by yesterday.The Customs recruitment exercise has given us 573,680 reasons to have this conversation.Let us not waste them.Because if 573,680 Nigerians must compete for 3,852 opportunities, then every seat at the top of that institution must be treated as a national responsibility, not a private possession.Experience must be honoured.Wisdom must be preserved.But the ladder must remain open.The young are not asking to inherit Nigeria by force.They are asking that Nigeria stop postponing their turn.And that is a conversation we must have before 2027.