By IPS Correspondents
WASHINGTON, May 15 1998 (IPS)

The Mobil Corporation, under fire from human rights activists and shareholders for its operations in Nigeria, has agreed to urge the military government there to release jailed labour leaders.

Lucio A. Noto, Mobil’s chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), made the symbolic commitment at the company’s annual shareholders’ meeting here Thursday. But he rejected critics’ charges Mobil was complicit in sustaining Gen. Sani Abacha’s rule – and ruled out suggestions it would wield significant influence over the regime.

“You need to be realistic about what a private company can do,” Noto told activists and shareholders. “We do not topple governments.”

A resolution to make the company follow human rights guidelines in its Nigerian operations was defeated in a shareholders’ vote Thursday. But the proposal garnered enough vocal support to force Noto into making that concession.

Tearful family members of Abacha’s jailed foes accused Virginia- based Mobil of helping to prop up the dictatorship, which relies on oil exports for 12 billion dollars per year in revenues. Mobil is the second-largest producer of crude oil in Nigeria, after the Royal Dutch Shell Group.

“The Nigerian government eats, breathes, and sleeps oil,” said Cordelia Kokori, looking straight at the Mobil chief. Her father is Frank Kokori, head of an oil and gas workers’ union. He and fellow union leader Milton Dabibi were imprisoned without charge in 1994 and 1996, respectively. Both reportedly are very ill but have been denied medical attention.

“Oil money has purchased the guns to assassinate my mother,” added Hafsat Abiola, whose mother, Kudirat Abiola, was shot to death in 1996. Her father, Moshood Abiola, was the presumed winner of 1993 presidential elections annulled by the military.

Reports of human rights and labour abuses in Nigeria have become commonplace since Abacha seized office in 1993. The government reportedly has imprisoned 7,000 people without charge, including opposition politicians, journalists and human rights activists.

A group of shareholders at Thursday’s meeting, together with the two Nigerian women and other rights activists, took Mobil to task over its dealings with the wholly state-owned Nigerian National Petroleum Company, through which, they alleged, Mobil’s payments of royalties, fees and taxes had been channeled to the military government.

“We have put Mobil on the spot and they need to show us that their concerns for the people of Nigeria are real,” said Simon Billenness, senior analyst at the Boston-based Franklin Research and Development Corporation, an investment firm with 3.9 million dollars in Mobil stock. Franklin Research also had been involved in the campaign to withdraw investments from apartheid-era South Africa.

After negotiations fell apart between Mobil and reformers seeking voluntary action from the company, Franklin Research and the Washington-based Service Employees International Union (SEIU) proposed the shareholder resolution. “It’s past time for Mobil to take action,” said SEIU President Andrew Stern.

The proposal – denounced by management and ultimately defeated by shareholders – called for the oil giant to develop guidelines for operations in countries with a “pattern” of human rights abuses. Also urged were prescriptions for dealing with countries where the government was deemed “illegitimate”, which faced economic sanctions – or where Mobil’s financial performance might be threatened by international criticism or consumer boycotts.

Under the resolution, Mobil would have been required to develop and review those guidelines in cooperation with human rights groups, according to Carolyn Lauer, coordinator of international affairs at SEIU. The measure carried 6.8 percent of shareholders’ votes, enough to allow it to be raised again next year.

Despite Noto’s commitment, he and other company directors maintained objections to the proposed resolution. They said it would require the company to establish its own foreign policy separate from laws created by the federal government.

“The Board (of Directors) feels strongly that it is not appropriate to establish its own country-by-country policy,” Mobil management said in a statement. “For such a policy, Mobil must rely upon and strictly observe the laws and foreign policy created by the U.S. government.”

Noto said that Mobil already considered the risks and rewards of doing business overseas but that he was against opening that decision-making process to the public, as the resolution required.

In addition, he argued that Mobil’s competitors – including Shell and Chevron – simply would take over the company’ interests were it to pull out of Nigeria. “I could walk away, but what good would it do?,” he asked.

Activists agreed with that assessment and, arguing that Mobil’s competitors were equally responsible for the Abacha regime’s health, said they also had targeted those companies.

Billenness, commenting on the larger-than-expected support for the resolution at Thursday’s meeting, told IPS: “We had a small success. As awareness among shareholders increases, we’ll likely have more successes in the future.”

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