'This is the time I need to do it': Helen Ogbu looks to make history in Galway West by-election
Labour Party leader Ivana Bacik (right) with Galway West by-election candidate Helen Ogbu (left). File picture: Leah Farrell/RollingNews.ie
Despite the cool evening air, the smell of freshly laid tar lingered in the summer sunshine as Labour canvassers for Helen Ogbu took to the streets of Galway West.
This was no ordinary road, however. In an unsuspecting house towards the bottom of the street lies the abode of President Catherine Connolly. While she had been home earlier in the day on Thursday, she had returned to Áras an Uachtaráin a few hours earlier.
Remarkably, the woman who moved out of the Áras shortly before President Connolly moved in was standing outside, knocking on the front door of the house in the Claddagh.
As the car pulled up and Sabina Higgins, iar-Uachtáran Michael D’s wife, stepped out, many canvassers for Ms Ogbu expected she would take a picture with the party’s candidate in next Friday’s by-election in Galway West and then leave.
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Instead, Mrs Higgins stayed out canvassing for over an hour and a half, often linking arms with a Labour grandee as she pounded the pavements. She noted how it was nice to be back in Galway again, seeing the people after 14 years in Dublin.
And they were equally as delighted to see her. “What are you doing in the Claddagh?” Kevin O’Brien asked her as he walked up the road with his little boy.
Mrs Higgins joked that she had been around the Claddagh long before Ms Ogbu, any of the canvassers, or even him, for that matter.
Each door she knocked on, there were questions about how she and Mr Higgins were settling back into Galway, and how her husband was.
“That’s herself,” one man said. “Michael D Higgins!”
Despite the warm reception, Mrs Higgins was keen to make it clear she was canvassing for Ms Ogbu, one of 17 candidates in the by-election to fill the seat vacated by President Connolly.
When asked by the if she wanted to provide a quote for this piece, Mrs Higgins declined, but told people on the door what a great candidate Ms Ogbu was, and how wonderful it was that she was involved in politics.
In many ways, the welcome for Ms Ogbu was as warm as it was for Mrs Higgins.
Last week, one of her posters was defaced with a racist slur. The Labour Party said a staffer spends 40% of their time deleting racist abuse on social media.
Born in Nigeria, Ms Ogbu has lived in Ireland for 20 years and raised her child in Galway. She has also fostered dozens of children. Her husband, Sunny Orji-Ogbu, was also a politician; he was assassinated in Nigeria in 2010.
As she knocked on the doors, people told her that they hoped people were being kind. If victorious, she will be the first woman of colour elected to Dáil Éireann. Does the prospect of being a history maker weigh on her mind as she knocks on the doors?
“It's going to be amazing,” Ms Ogbu said. “The City of Tribes, for the first time [electing a black woman], that says a lot. The people of Galway have the opportunity to prove that, to do that.
“This is the time I need to do it.”
MS Ogbu said that while there has been racism, it is not something she is witnessing at the doors, as she questioned if the online hate was coming from real people.
Back on Father Burke Road in the Claddagh, the conversation had returned to the fresh tarmacadam. “We are privileged now,” one neighbour said.
“You have a nice new road now, we noticed,” Mrs Higgins replied. He joked back: “People are saying the crime rate must have gone sky high here as there are so many cops around!”
As the canvassing party approached President Connolly’s front door, the garda, dutifully positioned in his car on the driveway, shouted out the window that she was not home.
One of the canvassing team said she was up and down between Galway and Dublin quite regularly, something Mrs Higgins and her husband had not really done.
If Helen Ogbu has her way, she will soon also be making the journey between Galway and Dublin to attend Leinster House as a Labour TD in a few short weeks. She is hoping to do it as a history maker.
- Louise Burne is a political correspondent for the
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