{"id":201800,"date":"2025-07-06T20:42:04","date_gmt":"2025-07-06T18:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/west-africa\/nigeria\/nigeria-ilya-damagum-chair-of-nigerias-main-opposition-party-denies-plans-to-defect-to-the-ruling-apc\/"},"modified":"2025-07-06T20:42:04","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T18:42:04","slug":"nigeria-ilya-damagum-chair-of-nigerias-main-opposition-party-denies-plans-to-defect-to-the-ruling-apc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/west-africa\/nigeria\/nigeria-ilya-damagum-chair-of-nigerias-main-opposition-party-denies-plans-to-defect-to-the-ruling-apc\/","title":{"rendered":"Nigeria: Ilya Damagum, Chair of Nigeria&#8217;s Main Opposition Party, Denies Plans to Defect to the Ruling APC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"16\"><em>Ilya Damagum, chair of Nigeria&#8217;s main opposition party, denies plans to defect to the ruling APC<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"37\"><strong>IN SHORT:<\/strong> Posts circulating online claim that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chair is planning to defect to the ruling party in order to contest the 2027 Yobe state governorship election. However, Damagum has denied the claims.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"22\">With political realignments intensifying ahead of Nigeria&#8217;s 2027 general elections, speculation about <a href=\"https:\/\/businessday.ng\/politics\/article\/2027-gale-of-defections-and-one-party-state\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">party defections<\/a> continues to dominate social media platforms and&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202507040535.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 West Africa <a title=\"Nigeria\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/west-africa\/nigeria\/\">Nigeria<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ilya Damagum, chair of Nigeria&#8217;s main opposition party, denies plans to defect to the ruling APC IN SHORT: Posts circulating online claim that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chair is planning to defect to the ruling party in order to contest the 2027 Yobe state governorship election. However, Damagum has denied the claims. With political [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":201801,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[249],"tags":[258,256,11297,6412,48001,11254,7651,51810,9612,257,4687,393,5761,5675,7024,5212,7870,254],"class_list":["post-201800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nigeria","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-apc","tag-chair","tag-damagum","tag-defect","tag-denies","tag-ilya","tag-main","tag-news","tag-nigeria","tag-nigeria-news","tag-nigerias","tag-opposition","tag-party","tag-plans","tag-ruling","tag-south-africa-today"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/static\/images\/structure\/aa-logo-rgba-no-text-square.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/201801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}