The Labour Party has defended Mayor of Galway Helen Ogbu after what it described as a “typo” on her webpage in relation to the timeline of her seeking asylum in Ireland.<\/p>\n
Last night, the party issued a statement responding to a media query about a discrepancy in the detail between her moving from Nigeria to Ireland in 2006 and the death of her husband in Nigeria in 2010.<\/p>\n
Ms Ogbu was the Labour candidate in the recent Galway West bye-election.<\/p>\n
On the webpage, it stated that had she arrived in Ireland in 2006 following the assassination of her husband.<\/p>\n
Sunny Orji-Ogbu was murdered in Nigeria in 2010, four years after the date stated online.<\/p>\n
The webpage was taken down following a query by a media outlet last Friday.<\/p>\n
Labour TD George Lawlor, who was Ms Ogbu’s director of elections for the bye-election, said the discrepancy was a “typo” made by a volunteer and activist, and not by the party.<\/p>\n
He said that he did not believe the mistake was a falsehood, but accepted that it was an inaccuracy.<\/p>\n
“The typo, I presume, was in the word ‘after’. Helen Ogbu has been very upfront about everything that she has endured,” Mr Lawlor said.<\/p>\n
“What should be explained is that Helen Ogbu moved to Ireland because her husband was under serious threat, that serious threat came to pass with his assassination.<\/p>\n
“Helen Ogbu arrived in Ireland because her husband’s life was under threat. She came to Ireland. Her husband was subsequently assassinated, that’s the situation.<\/p>\n
“What more proof do we need that was an issue with the safety of Helen?”<\/p>\n
Labour added in a statement that Ms Ogbu has been subjected to “significant racist abuse and harassment on an ongoing basis”.<\/p>\n
The party also said that she was subjected to an “intimidatory and unacceptable” form of “doorstepping” by a media outlet.<\/p>\n
Ms Ogbu was elected Mayor of Galway earlier this year, becoming the first African woman to hold the position.<\/p>\n
She was elected to Galway City Council in 2024.<\/p>\n
In the bye-election, she finished third, securing 11.4% of first preference votes and close to 13,000 votes overall.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Labour Party has defended Mayor of Galway Helen Ogbu after what it described as a “typo” on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":525968,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-525967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=525967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/525967\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/525968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=525967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=525967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=525967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}