In another way, governments should be the producers of some of these products , the distributor and retailer of these products in order to drag down the monopoly of the private hands.
The government cannot be the only producer, distributor and seller of essential commodities. If this happens it means that the government is moving towards fascism where almost all the sectors of the state are under strict control of the government. If you look closely at some of the sound economies of the world you will see that their economy is driven by private businesses. The government responsibilities in those developed nations are just supervisory. These regulatory bodies supervise businesses to ensure that they are abiding by the laws that control them.
You gave an example of Nigeria and advised the government to go into the production of essential goods and services. But in the history of the country, the government has never been a good business entity. The refineries, telecom, railway, airport and other businesses that were controlled by the government have all been mismanaged because of corruption. Out of four refineries that the nation has none is functioning today due to mismangement. The telecom sector is currently effective in the country because it was privatised.
In summary, the government should make laws to control the private sector to avoid monopoly and exploitation. They can also subsidise some essential commodities to cushion the effect of some negative economic conditions. However, the private sector is the major driver of the economic development of any country.
Price Regulatory Mechanisms: The Solution to the Economic Hardship in Countries
The establishment of price regulatory boards is essential to check the excesses of greedy businessmen, but the solution to the economic hardship of most developing nations is the eradication of bribery and corruption. My reason is that these price regulatory boards are useless if they are headed by corrupt officials. In my country, the officials of these boards connive with businesses to exploit the people.
With the examples you outlined, is as best someone even ask that the day to day running of government should be privatized. because it's beginning to sound as if whatever that is given to government to run always turns out to be Moribund after some years. A Lot of people always say that government don't have any business going into business, because government are bad managers of business. However this theory really work because most of the juicy and productive aspects of the nation is being owned by the government. for the Nigerian case, a very good example is the oil and gas sector, the government are the sole regulators of the oil and gas sector headed by the NNPL, and the government have run the business of oil and gas to the ground, to a point we don't have refined product crude oil in our country and we are also buying this oil and gas product at a very high rate even as a producing nation. So truly the small scale medium Enterprise and the multinationals and big private sectors are the one that are solely helping to keep the economy afloat given their impact on the economy.