On her appointment as Mayor of Galway we published what appeared to be a factual article about Helen Ogbu based on the available information in circulation. Galway Labour Party material states that Helen Ogbu the recently installed Mayor of Galway and her family moved to Ireland in 2006 “seeking safety and a fresh start after the tragic loss of my husband.”
However, her husband was alive and well and politically active back in Nigeria in 2006. Did she abandon her busily politically active husband in 2006 to go to Ireland? Is there any truth in her available biographical material if such key information is untrue?
Credibility Problem
Why does her Labour Party biography suggest the move happened after her husband’s death when that wasn’t true? Was she lying or were the Labour party lying or were they both lying and are they all still lying. The question is, if that key episode of her life is a fabrication what else that is stated about her is also a fabrication? There is a major credibility problem here.
Belated Assassination
Her husband, Sunny Ogbu, was not assassinated until 2010, four years after the Labour Party literature says he died and says she moved to Ireland after his death. It appears that Helen Ogbu had set her sights on Ireland as early as 2001 when she first travelled to Ireland without her husband while pregnant and gave birth to her daughter in Dublin. Under the constitutional rules that existed at the time the baby obtained Irish citizenship. She then returned to Nigeria, mission accomplished, with her Irish citizen child. Why would she return if Nigeria was unsafe?
She next returned to Ireland in 2006 “seeking safety and a fresh start after the tragic loss of my husband”. However, her husband was alive and well in 2006. Since that was a blatant lie isn’t it likely that she entered the country under false pretences?
Her Labour Party bio says that Ogbu obtained her Master’s degree in History and Diplomacy from the University of Port Harcourt in Nigeria. The year she graduated with this degree is not specified in her available public profiles or interviews. Did she graduate at all? If she lied on her entry into Ireland concerning her husband’s death as the Labour Party literature suggests, can we believe anything else in her extensive Labour Party biography? Based on her entering the country under what appears to be false pretences is she even here legally?
Biographies and personal stories presented by politicians and political parties should be consistent and with a credible documented timeline otherwise they have no credibility. Is Helen Ogbu the Mayor of Galway for Real?