When Shell discovered commercial crude in the Niger Delta in 1956, it entrenched a hierarchy that lasted decades: international oil companies at the top, the Nigerian state in the middle, and oil-bearing communities at the margins. Nearly thirty years after the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the most prominent critic of that structure, the architecture of Nigeria’s oil industry is being rewritten, not by foreign majors, but by a rising generation of Nigerian independents. The shift is visible in the numbers. Read also:  When Shell discovered commercial crude in the Niger Delta in 1956, it entrenched a hierarchy that lasted decades: international oil companies at the top, the Nigerian state in the middle, and oil-bearing communities at the margins. Nearly thirty years after the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, the most prominent critic of that structure, the architecture of Nigeria’s oil industry is being rewritten, not by foreign majors, but by a rising generation of Nigerian independents. The shift is visible in the numbers. Read also: