In the sweltering heat and notorious afternoon rush hour traffic of Lagos, a fight broke out in front of a filling station.

In a nation built on petroleum, where virtually all government revenue is derived from sale of the nation’s massive stores of oil and natural gas, citizens have spent the past eight weeks in a rolling energy crisis. The scene, witnessed in late March, has been repeated again and again at filling stations across Lagos and increasingly, the rest of the country, since early February. As news of the scarcity spreads, long lines begin to form at filling stations as people seek to stock up on fuel both for cars and for home and business generators that are the only