THE Labour Party has failed Mayor of Galway Helen Ogbu, either through its own incompetence or by trying to distort her story for its own political gain.

Ms Ogbu’s story is a sensitive one, steeped in tragedy and marred by racial abuse, but that does not mean it is beyond reproach.

The party spent a week tying itself up in knots, contradicting Ms Ogbu and attacking the Mail for daring to point out inconsistencies in its story.

There are many versions of Ms Ogbu’s story online in different media, which the party and Ms Ogbu have not corrected, and which remain online and were even shared by them.

The facts appear to be that Ms Ogbu arrived here in 2001 while heavily pregnant and visiting friends along with her husband.

However, her husband had to return to Nigeria, and she stayed on in a hotel.

During this visit she gave birth to her daughter who was born as an Irish citizen under the laws at the time.

At some point after her daughter’s birth, she returned to Nigeria.

Ms Ogbu then came to Ireland again in 2005 with her daughter, out of fear for their safety.

Despite these fears, she returned to Nigeria in August 2010 to attend a political rally for her husband Sunny, who was then seeking election and was tragically assassinated in October of that year.

The problem is that Labour has allowed a link between Ms Ogbu’s arrival in Ireland and the time her husband was assassinated, while omitting her earlier stay in this country.

Ms Ogbu’s March 25 by-election campaign video says the first time ‘we’ came to Ireland was when there was a threat on her husband’s life, so it was best ‘for us not to be around’.

‘Well, the first time I came to Ireland was, my husband was involved in, he’s always been involved in politics.

‘There was a target on his life, so best thing for us was for us not to be around. He was running for the federal house in Nigeria in 2010 and he was assassinated, and that was a very difficult time,’ the video says.

The video gives the impression that the ‘we’ in the clearly edited video referred to Ms Ogbu and her daughter, particularly when read alongside the information published on her website and by the party.

The video, like Ms Ogbu’s personal website, and the email sent by her party leader, can be taken to give the impression that there was a direct link between the assassination of her husband and her arrival in Ireland.

As revealed by the Mail this week, on Ms Ogbu’s official website she stated: ‘In 2006, my family and I moved to Ireland, seeking safety and a fresh start after the tragic loss of my husband.’ However, Ms Ogbu’s husband was murdered in Nigeria in 2010, not 2006, and she came to Ireland in 2005, not 2006.

It is difficult to understand how such a factual error, and not a ‘typo’ as the party attempted to claim, found itself on her website since 2025 and remained there until highlighted by the Mail.

Following her selection for the by-election, Labour leader Ivana Bacik wrote to party members on January 27 to inform them of Ms Ogbu’s ‘extraordinary’ story. ‘Helen’s life story is extraordinary. Born and raised in Nigeria, she came to Ireland in 2006 and raised her own family here in the face of extreme challenges, following the assassination in Nigeria of her beloved husband, Sunny Orji-Ogbu,’ she wrote.

A Labour Party newsletter circulated days after Ms Ogbu’s selection also erroneously stated she moved to Ireland ‘after the tragic loss of her husband’.

The Labour Party subsequently told the Mail that it took ‘full responsibility’ for the errors. ‘We regret that a mistake was inadvertently made on the website and, as soon as it came to our attention, sought to correct it.

‘The party accepts full responsibility for this typo,’ it said.

Again, it is difficult to comprehend how this happened. The party is suggesting that the biographical information shared with party members by its leader was taken from the erroneous website.

A party would ordinarily verify biographical details with a candidate during the due diligence process.

Ms Ogbu still needs to answer why she continued to share social media posts, news articles and videos that contained false information about her. Are we to believe she simply reposted them all without looking at them?

Our faith in Labour’s ability to be transparent about this has evaporated.

On Monday, the party told the Mail that the issue of the website ‘arose from an editing error during a previous update’ and that Ms Ogbu ‘only recently became aware of the mistake’.

On Tuesday morning, Labour TD for Wexford George Lawlor claimed the issue was caused by a ‘volunteer’ party activist.

Then, on Wednesday morning Ms Ogbu told Galway Bay FM, in a clear contradiction of what we had been told all week, that she became aware of the issue ‘last year’ and blamed ‘incompetence’ on the part of a private company that set up the website.

In addition to this, Labour has allowed for the erroneous versions of Ms Ogbu’s back story to remain unedited in other media.

Part of any political party’s press office is to ensure incorrect information about its candidates or elected representatives is clarified in the media.

This ensures that any false information is not repeated as fact by other outlets. Yet the erroneous version of Ms Ogbu’s back story was repeated without being corrected.

It would take an unimaginable level of incompetence for Ms Ogbu, the party’s apparatchiks and the leader not to have realised they were continuing to share false information central to Ms Ogbu’s story.

But that is their claim.

After a week of contradictory explanations, uncorrected inaccuracies and shifting accounts, they should not be surprised if many people find it difficult to trust them.