The Nigerian spy police

by Glenn Mckenzie

When Eric Teenwi patrols ExxonMobil's hulking export terminal on the lookout for thieves and saboteurs, he wears a Nigerian police uniform. But he insists that his employer is the US oil giant, not the state.
"I am a security guard," he says, flashing an identification badge bearing the logo of ExxonMobil's Nigerian subsidiary.

Mr Teenwi and 14 other members of an 800-strong police unit guarding the company are suing its Nigerian subsidiary in a high court in the south-eastern city of Uyo in a bid to win employee salary and other benefits. At a time when insecurity in Nigeria's oil industry has helped push crude prices to record highs, the case poses a thorny legal and political tangle for ExxonMobil and other petroleum multinationals in Nigeria, the world's seventh-largest oil exporter and fifth-largest source of US imports.
Like other oil companies in Nigeria, ExxonMobil depends on police and military protection in the swampy oil-producing delta, where gangs of activists, ethnic militants and thugs frequently attack installations, sabotage facilities and take workers hostage in a bid to extort company payoffs.

Yet companies fear being linked with the numerous killings, rapes and other rights abuses blamed on Nigeria's notoriously heavy-handed security forces, some units of which have been nicknamed Kill and Go by residents. In 1999, troops gunned down as many as 1,000 people in the oil-producing town of Odi, apparently in retaliation for the slaying of police force members.
"The question in the case is an interesting one: Are security forces accountable to the state or the company? And where does the public come in? Who takes responsibility when something goes wrong?" said Innocent Chukwuma, a leading rights campaigner in Lagos.

Mr Teenwi is one of thousands of Nigerian officers in what is known as the "supernumerary" or "spy" police, a division whose members' careers have been devoted to protecting oil multinationals. The diminutive 35-year-old is proud of the security work he does protecting ExxonMobil, whose staff he insists on calling "my employers." Yet several other plaintiffs complain that the job is both risky and occasionally violent, often involving suppressing angry demonstrators.
"My duty is to make people afraid," said an officer hunkered down in a concrete guardhouse outside the ExxonMobil facility. "Our own people hate us," he added.

Although ExxonMobil and other oil company officials say the spy police protecting them are unarmed -- regular-service officers carry weapons -- villagers and activists have accused all types of officers protecting the company of firing on unarmed local demonstrators.
A senior Western security consultant working for several oil companies acknowledged that foreign company officials routinely pay senior officers in armouries and station headquarters to provide weapons and ammunition for the use of spy police and other security regulars deployed at oil installations.
"Otherwise, they'll turn up without any bullets," the Western security official said. "They can't protect us without bullets, can they?"

The plaintiffs in the case against ExxonMobil say they were recruited, screened and supervised by the company. They say it even pays them -- direct monthly allowances of $ 140, plus salaries of a roughly equivalent amount that are routed through police coffers. They insist their only association with the national police force is the uniform and a required three-month state academy training course.
ExxonMobil spokeswoman Susan Reeves insisted that all supernumerary officers deployed to the company's facilities are "employees of the national police." Under provisions of 1990 laws governing police operations, she said, the police force assigned the officers to company facilities at the request of the firm's subsidiary, Mobil Producing Nigeria.
"MPN maintains that, consistent with the Police Act, the supernumerary police officers are employees of the Nigerian police force," Ms. Reeves said. "We regret that 15 supernumerary police officers have chosen to litigate this matter."

National police spokesman Chris Olakpe declined to comment until the case is settled. But a member of the legal team representing the police said the force is taking the position that paying salaries and other benefits is the "sole responsibility of the company they have been assigned to."
Mr Teenwi and the others suing ExxonMobil say they are suing for pension and other benefits that they do not receive because they are recognized fully neither as company nor police employees.

The website of Nigeria's police force outlines the force's structure but does not mention the existence of the thousands of spy police protecting the oil industry or uncounted others deployed to foreign and domestic banks and other firms. Claimants say that since they launched their case last year, the company's security department has assigned the plaintiffs more arduous duties, such as patrolling outside the perimeter fence surrounding the terminal.
A uniformed regular-service policeman, toting an automatic rifle as he patrolled that route, warned that such treatment could come back to haunt the company.
"We are human beings. But if they treat us like animals, perhaps we will act like animals," he said.