Nigeria deployed police and soldiers to gasoline stations to maintain order as fuel shortages grip Africa’s biggest oil producer. The most severe fuel scarcity in a year in Africa’s most populous nation has left motorists paying more than double the government’s official price for gasoline and put increasing pressure on a stagnating economy that’s been hit by tumbling oil prices. The national statistics office blames the shortages, which have been on and off since May and have peaked again in the last month, for contributing to an 8 percent drop in labor productivity in the fourth quarter. “The fuel industry is holding the whole economy to ransom,” Nema Ramkhelawan-Bhana, an analyst at Rand Merchant Bank in Johannesburg, said by phone. “Nigeria is already suffering from low oil prices, and now fuel shortages are exacerbating […]