The Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has distanced itself from a wave of forged employment letters circulating online, warning the public that the agency is not currently recruiting and that anyone claiming otherwise is running a scam.
The disclaimer, posted on FAAN’s official X account on Thursday, comes after a document styled as a “Letter of Provisional Offer of Employment” dated August 18, 2026, and carrying a logo closely mimicking the aviation agency’s branding began making the rounds on social media and, reportedly, through direct messages to unsuspecting job seekers.
According to FAAN, the letters are being pushed by individuals with no connection to the Authority who are exploiting its name and visual identity to appear credible.
The agency was unambiguous in its rebuttal, stating flatly that it “is not currently conducting any recruitment exercise” and that it “disassociates itself from this letter and any related employment offers.”
The scam follows a pattern that has become depressingly familiar to Nigerian job seekers: a professional-looking offer letter, an official-sounding logo, and inevitably a demand for money or personal information before the “job” can be confirmed.
FAAN’s statement addressed this directly, urging Nigerians not to send payments to anyone issuing the fraudulent offers and not to hand over personal data or otherwise engage with the people behind them.
The Authority instead directed prospective applicants to verify any recruitment claims through its official communication channels before taking further action, a now-standard piece of advice from government agencies contending with impersonation fraud.
FAAN’s alert adds to a growing list of Nigerian government bodies that have had to publicly disown fake recruitment campaigns bearing their names in recent months.
The Nigeria Immigration Service warned the public in February 2025 that no hiring exercise was underway despite adverts suggesting otherwise, while the Nigeria Customs Service issued a similar clarification in October 2025 after fake appointment letters surfaced during its actual recruitment window, making that case particularly tricky for applicants to navigate, since a genuine exercise and a fraudulent one were running in parallel.
The trend has continued into 2026. The Nigerian Upstream Petroleum Regulatory Commission cautioned the public just this month against fake, and in some cases AI-generated, employment letters issued in its name, alongside fraudsters demanding payment for supposed job offers.
Its sister regulator, the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority, cautioned Nigerians in February against fraudulent recruitment schemes run by people posing as agency agents, warning that scammers were exploiting young and economically vulnerable Nigerians with non-existent job openings.
Around the same period, Nigeria’s food and drug regulator, NAFDAC, had to publicly deny a fake press release claiming it had launched a recruitment exercise after the bogus advert circulated widely on social media.
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission likewise had to clarify in early 2026 that it was not hiring after a fake “EFCC Recruitment 2026” campaign targeting young applicants spread on Facebook.
Even the Federal Road Safety Corps has had to warn the public about fraudsters posing as its staff, who went as far as issuing counterfeit call-up letters to training academies to extort job seekers.
Analysts and consumer-protection advocates point to a simple explanation for the persistence of these scams: Nigeria’s high youth unemployment rate creates a large, motivated pool of job seekers who are often willing to pay application or “processing” fees on the strength of a convincing-looking letter and a familiar government logo.
Fraud syndicates exploit the fact that many applicants are unfamiliar with an agency’s actual recruitment procedures; genuine government hiring in Nigeria typically runs through formal online portals rather than emailed letters or direct social media messages.
FAAN’s statement, like those from the Immigration Service, Customs, NUPRC, NMDPRA, NAFDAC, and EFCC before it, underscores a message regulators are repeating with growing frequency: verify before you apply, and never pay to get a government job.
For now, the Authority says the safest path for anyone who receives an unsolicited offer letter bearing its name is to simply check it against FAAN’s official channels and treat anything else as fake.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
FAAN is not recruiting right now; any offer letter, no matter how official it looks, is fake. Don’t pay money, don’t share personal details, and always verify recruitment claims directly through FAAN’s official channels before responding.
This is part of a wider pattern in Nigeria, with agencies like NUPRC, NMDPRA, NAFDAC, EFCC, and FRSC issuing similar warnings in recent months, so the same rule applies everywhere: if a “job offer” asks for money upfront, it’s a scam.
