Police Recruitment 2016: Two Websites Crash As Thousands Of Applicants Register

The fact that many Nigerian youths are jobless is a reality! Attempts by thousands of candidates to apply for enlistment into the Nigeria Police Force were frustrated on Friday as the two police portals for the recruitment crashed and were inaccessible for most part of the day....


The Police Service Commission had directed interested candidates to apply through its website, or that of the Nigeria Police Force, but the two websites crashed due to huge traffic.

Many youths could not apply online at different cyber cafés and had to go back home in frustration.

Several attempts to access the websites between 2pm and 6pm were abortive as the PSC website simply said, "This Account has been suspended. Contact your hosting provider for more information."

The police website on the other hand, was also inaccessible for over 10 hours in the course of the day.

But according to Punch, police sources said about 8,000 candidates had been able to register as of 2pm.

"Candidates started registering online from 4am on Friday when the portals opened for registration; as of 2pm, over 8,000 candidates had registered online. The traffic was huge and this explains why many applicants could not access the websites because the servers were down," a source explained.

The operator of Smart and Bright cafe, Kubwa, who gave his name as Kingsley, said he had to turn back many candidates because the recruitment portals were not accessible, adding that only few candidates were able to register.

Victor Igaman of Igaman Cafe, also stated that he turned back candidates on account of the jammed police servers. At Christ link cafe, about seven applicants had successfully applied while the eight person was observed filling in his bio-data.

A candidate, who gave her name as Margaret, said she was able to apply after spending 20 minutes, adding that the huge traffic on the websites was to blame for the hiccups experienced by candidates.

The Head of Press and Public Relations in PSC, Ikechukwu Ani, said the commission's technical team was working on the servers to address the hitches.

"I have notified our technical team and they are working on the servers, all the hiccups would be addressed and candidates would find it easier to file their applications. I believe the issues we are experiencing were caused by the traffic from the huge number of applicants," he explained.

The frustration of the applicants was vented on social media as some applicants berated poor infrastructural preparedness of authorities for the barrage of applications.

An applicant, Samogconsu, on an online forum, questioned the size of the bandwidth being used by the police for the application.

He said, "I just decided to visit the recruitment website this morning and discovered that the hosting company has suspended the website meant for the recruitment exercise.

"Could it be the police owed the hosting company or they have limited bandwidth that caused the shutdown? I think they need to give explanations to Nigerians. It is saying 'This account has been suspended, contact your hosting provider for more information'."

Another applicant, identified as Adet5 said, "Concerning the ongoing police recruitment exercise, I observed that the website is malfunctioning. It is submitting application automatically even without the completion of filling of the forms and all efforts to reach its help desk has been abortive. Please is there anything I can do?"