The Civil Defence, Correctional, Fire and Immigration Services Board (CDCFIB) reopened its 2025 recruitment application portal on Monday, July 21, 2025, after days of technical glitches.

However, a test of the CDCFIB portal by our team showed that there is still a slight technical issue on the point of submitting your application, but this post guides you through the process of overcoming the challenge and submit your application.

Application guidelines

According to an announcement by the recruitment board, the Civil Defense, Correctional, Fire and Immigration Services Board invites interested Nigerians to apply for their ongoing recruitment exercise into the four different services.

Roles:

• Superintendents (Bsc, HND and MSc)
• Inspectors (NCE, ND or Equivalent)
• Assistants (SSCE)

Requirements

• Nigerian Citizen by Birth
• Age range: 18 to 35 years
• Minimum Height: 1.65m for males, 1.60m for females
• Physically and mentally fit
• No criminal record

Deadline: 3 weeks from today (21st July)

Note: Applicants are eligible to apply for only one of the services.

Unable to proceed to the last stage

If you are unable to proceed to the last stage of your application, which is the final submission, check your space where you input your NYSC certificate number, remote it and click on proceed, you will be able to proceed to submit your application.

InfomediaNG team tested the process of submitting with the NYSC certificate number more than 50 times, but was unable to proceed to the last page, but upon removing the NYSC cert. No., we’re able to submit.

We don’t know why, but we are sure that should be an error on the part of the portal management, inclusion of NYSC Cert. Number should never be a reason why applicants are unable to proceed to the final stage of their application.

Will removing my NYSC cert. number be an issue

No. All the documents uploaded on the CDCFIB or Nigeria Civil Defence recruitment portal are for formality. You will still be asked to present the original documents at the point of screening or when you successfully made the final shortlist.

By the way, the issue isn’t from you, it is from the designer of the CDCFIB recruitment portal.

Where can I find my NYSC certificate Number?

You can find your NYSC certificate number at the top right-hand of your certificate. It begins with A…. For example A004232146 (any coincidence of this cert. no. is highly regretted). You can check where NYSC cert. No. is located in our previous article.

Which of the paramilitary is the best for me?

CDCFIB consists of four paramilitary arms, which include: the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps, the Nigerian Correctional Service (Prisons); the Federal Fire Service Nigeria, and the Nigeria Immigration Service. You are free to apply to any of them under the CDCFIB based on your preference.

However, a career adviser on X (formerly Twitter), Engr. MS Ingawa gives a good analysis of the paramilitary which aligns with our assessment of the four paramilitary bodies.

In a post titled, “About the paramilitary recruitment. My assessment of the 4 services”, Engr. Ingawa analysed the recruitment and preference of applicants based on four factors that should guide them thus:

1. Salary
2. Time
3. Condition of service
4. Competition

Here is what Ingawa posted verbatim

SALARY WISE

All the four services are under one board and one ministry so they share same salary structure which is Consolidated Para-Military Salary Structure (COMPASS). So going by salary alone, all the four services offer same paycheck at various levels and grades.

CONDITION OF SERVICE

What differentiates most workplaces in government is condition of service. Out of the four services, Immigration offers best service conditions as there are numerous opportunities like, foreign postings, passport offices, water, air and road boarders, special desk offices in public institutions and many more opportunities.

These conditions and special postings often come with special allowances, networking opportunities that can change one’s life. Next to it in terms of condition of service is Civil Defense as one can be posted anywhere police are being posted to. And that also comes with special allowances and networking opportunities.

Prison (Correctional) Service is the 3rd as there are different correctional centers of various degree of influence and importance. It may sound ridiculous but some prison centers offer networking opportunities and special allowances more than others.

While you manage former governors and ministers in some centers, another is managing phone snatchers and two fighters in other centersFire Service too has its own allowances especially on postings to special economic zones and industrial areas or even mega industries. But the opportunities are not as rampant as the other.

TIME WISE

The higher the opportunities the more the time demanded. So if you are the type that needs time for other things, then apply in reverse case of the above order— Fire, Correctional, Civil Defense and Immigration Services.

COMPETITION WISE

The services with the most opportunities ordinarily would attract the most applicants. So Immigration and Civil Defense will have the most applications. Fortunately they are the most demanded by the board, 10,000 each while others 5,000 each.

So candidates applying for Immigration and Civil Defense will have lower success rate than those applying for Fire and Correctional Services based on the no of applications and staff need. Even people with connections will troop to the first two.

You can begin your application here: http://recruitment.cdcfib.gov.ng 

Based on the above analysis, you should be able to know the one that fits into your needs or that you will be able to cope with more. All the best.