The Nigerian government has announced new measures to deal with the desperate fuel shortages which are damaging the national economy.

The existing paramilitary body charged with petrol distribution, the National Task Force, has been dissolved and replaced by a new body known as the Federal Petroleum Monitoring Unit.

The government said the present situation in which motorists across the country are having to queue for hours, and sometimes days, in order to buy petrol could not be allowed to continue unchecked.

Nigeria's military ruler General Abdulsalami Abubakar described the fuel shortage as a national embarrassment and last week said he was determined to root out inefficiency and corruption in the oil sector.

Radical solutions sought

The announcement that the National Task Force is being replaced is a step in this direction, but the scrapping of one discredited institution does not amount to the bold action many Nigerians are calling for.

The new Federal Petroleum Monitoring Unit will, like its predecessor, include personnel from the police, army and state security services. It will try to ensure that petrol that arrives in Nigeria's ports does not disappear onto the black market, but ends up being sold at designated petrol stations.

But many critics of the government say the black market will only end when the price of petrol, currently set at about 10 US cents per litre, is allowed to float freely.

Free market versus political popularity

In theory a raise in prices ought to reduce the incentive for the massive smuggling of petrol out of Nigeria and into neighbouring West African states, where it is being sold at a considerable profit.

But raising petrol prices is a political risk, particularly only weeks before the start of elections, which are intended to restore Nigeria to civilian rule, and the black market would continue to flourish anyway if demand for petrol still outstrips supply.

The government says it is working on the rehabilitation of Nigeria's four oil refineries, all of which are in a state of woeful disrepair.