Scott Tommey was once unimaginable to overlook. The founder and CEO of Osmoserve Global Limited chartered flights to fly visitors and entertainers to Dubai for his fortieth birthday, allegedly owned a Bombardier Global Express, and spent the 2010s as one of Abuja’s most talked-about socialites. These days, he’s more durable to seek out.
Nothing scandalous pressured that shift, at the least nothing confirmed. Tommey constructed Osmoserve into an engineering, procurement, and marine companies agency serving multinational oil firms and authorities businesses throughout the Niger Delta, and the corporate nonetheless runs, simply with much less noise round it.
So why the retreat? Part of the reply is private. Tommey and his spouse, Seiyefa, welcomed triplets in recent times, and mates say fatherhood pulled his consideration away from the celebration circuit towards one thing quieter.
Part of it’s scrutiny. In June 2022, the EFCC arrested and questioned him over his agency’s contracts and alleged misappropriation of NDDC intervention funds, earlier than releasing him on administrative bail. That type of consideration tends to vary how a businessman reveals up in public.
Political shifts have performed a task too. Commentators have pointed to a cooling relationship with Senate President Godswill Akpabio, a once-close ally, as one motive Tommey’s entry to political patronage networks has narrowed.
He has additionally stored a deliberate distance from partisan politics, turning down marketing campaign advisory roles to protect what he treats as a strictly industrial repute.
None of that is really new behaviour for him.
After the 2015 election, when the Buhari administration investigated high-net-worth oil contractors, Tommey vanished from celebration circuits for years, an existence that society chroniclers on the time known as hobbit-like. He has all the time resurfaced finally, normally round a milestone birthday or household occasion, earlier than disappearing once more as soon as anti-corruption businesses flip their consideration again to Niger Delta contracts.
For now, Osmoserve retains working, and Tommey retains assembly associates like Akan Udofia privately in Abuja reasonably than on the galas that when outlined him. Whether this quiet section outlasts the final one stays to be seen.
