The Nigerian Army has moved to douse a wave of public excitement generated by a bogus recruitment notice circulating on social media, insisting that no application process for its 92 Regular Recruitment Intake has been opened and that the trending publication is entirely fabricated.
In a statement signed by the Acting Assistant Director, Army Public Relations, Directorate of Recruitment, Captain AU Hammanga, and posted on the Army’s official X handle on Wednesday, the service described the viral notice as false and urged Nigerians to disregard it “in its entirety.”
“The publication is false and should be disregarded in its entirety,” the statement read.
Wednesday’s disclaimer is only the latest in a string of similar warnings the Army has issued over the past year, as fraudsters have repeatedly exploited the intense public appetite for military jobs to push counterfeit recruitment portals.
A near-identical notice was fabricated around the 90th Regular Recruitment Intake in September 2025, and imposter Facebook pages have separately been caught posing as recruitment agents during the genuine 91st intake, which the Army opened between March and May 2026, complete with fake logos of the Nigerian Defence Academy and armed forces to lend the scam an air of legitimacy.
That recurring cycle underscores why the Army has now made a point of spelling out, intake after intake, exactly how genuine recruitment announcements are made and why job seekers should be wary of anything that skips that process.
The Directorate of Recruitment stressed that it follows a defined, official channel for announcing new intakes and that the 92 Regular Recruitment Intake portal has not been formally opened.
“The Nigerian Army maintains a clear and official procedure for announcing recruitment exercises and related activities and will duly inform the public through its official channels once the portal for 92 Regular Recruitment Intake is formally opened,” the statement said.
Until such an announcement is made, the Army said, any publication claiming otherwise, regardless of how convincing it looks, should not be trusted.
Behind the terse disclaimer lies a more pressing concern: that scammers could use the fake notice as bait to defraud desperate job seekers, many of them young Nigerians eager for a rare shot at stable employment in a tough economy.
Past variants of this scam have followed a familiar playbook: bogus portals soliciting personal data and processing fees and impostor social media pages issuing fake admission letters or dangling non-existent slots in exchange for payment.
It is this exploitation risk that appears to have prompted the Army’s swift public rebuttal, well before any real portal has even opened.
Beyond knocking down the fake notice, the statement doubled as a broader reassurance of the Army’s recruitment integrity. “The Nigerian Army remains committed to transparency and professionalism in all recruitment processes,” it said, a line the institution has used consistently across previous fraud alerts to reinforce public confidence in its enlistment system, including the long-standing assurance that genuine recruitment into the Army is entirely free of charge.
The statement closed with direct guidance for prospective applicants:
- Verify before you apply. Confirm any recruitment announcement through the Army’s official channels before submitting an application.
- Never pay for a slot. Genuine recruitment does not require payment; anyone asking for money in exchange for enlistment should be treated as a scammer.
- Wait for the official word. The 92 Regular Recruitment Intake portal is not yet open. The Army says it will announce the actual start date through its verified platforms when the process formally begins.
Until then, the Nigerian Army has urged members of the public to disregard the circulating publication entirely and to treat any recruitment claim outside its official channels with suspicion.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
The 92 Regular Recruitment Intake has not been opened; the notice trending online is fake. The Nigerian Army only announces recruitment through its official channels; applying is always free, and no payment should ever be made to anyone claiming to offer a slot. Wait for the Army’s formal announcement before applying anywhere.
