Backgrounder: Profile of Nigeria's two major presidential candidates

Nigeria's rescheduled presidential and national assembly elections will be held on March 28, after the country announced on Feb. 7 a six-week postponement to the elections citing fears over security and the Boko Haram insurgency.

The elections were previously set on Feb. 14 and Feb. 28 respectively.

Below are the profiles of the two major candidates contesting in the presidential election.

Goodluck Jonathan:

Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, Nigeria's current president and presidential candidate of the ruling Peoples Democratic Party, has been leader of the West African country since 2010.

Between 2007 and 2010, he served as vice president of Nigeria, prior to which he was a deputy governor and later governor of Bayelsa, his state of origin in the Nigerian southeast region.

Jonathan, born in November 1957, was a lecturer, an education inspector and environmental protection officer. He joined politics in 1998.

In his Transformation Agenda for the country, for which he is now seeking continuity, the Nigerian leader had cited anti- corruption, power and electoral reforms as focuses of his administration.

Among his achievements in office include Nigeria's victory over Ebola which killed only seven people after its outbreak in the country last year. The country was declared free from the Ebola virus in October 2014, by the World Health Organization.

Nigeria also rose to be the largest economy in Africa under his watch.

Since April last year, however, pressure was mounted on the Jonathan-led government to bring back more than 200 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram, which seeks to enshrine the Islamic Sharia law in the constitution of Nigeria, Africa's most populous country.

Jonathan, while taking heed to protesters' call for the rescue of the girls, had, at one time, indicated his government's interest to do a prisoner release in exchange for the kidnapped girls. It is almost one year after the girls' abduction but the girls are yet to be rescued.

As the commander-in-chief of the Nigerian armed forces, by virtue of his office, Jonathan said, during presidential campaign, that his return to office as president would ensure the release of the abducted girls and an end to the insurgency of Boko Haram.

Muhammadu Buhari:

Muhammadu Buhari, presidential candidate of Nigeria's opposition All Progressives Congress (APC) party, is a retired Major General of the Nigerian Army and a fourth time contestant in the presidential race.

The 72 year-old Nigeria politician had unsuccessfully sought votes to be Nigerian president in 2003, 2007 and 2011 elections held in the West African country.

He was head of state of Nigeria for almost two years, having led a military coup d'etat that ended a democratic government in December 1983.

Buhari, a muslim, is a native of the northwestern state of Katsina, and of the Fulani ethnic background.

He joined the Nigerian army in 1961, one year after Nigeria gained independence from its British colonial masters. In the army, he rose through the ranks and attended several military courses in Nigeria and abroad, including the Defense Services Staff College, Wellington, India, and the U.S. Army War College in Pennyslvania.

He served as Military Secretary of the Nigerian Army Headquarters between 1978 and 1979, and was a member of the Nigerian Supreme Military Council in the same period.

A former military governor of Nigeria's North Eastern State, Buhari led social, economic and political improvement in Bauchi, Borno and (defunct) Gongola states.

Buhari, during the presidential campaign, denied his role in the December 1983 coup and clearly explained to Nigerians that as a military leader turned democrat, he was ready to take responsibility for all military actions considered as "undemocratic" or "anti-people".

In one of his most famous quotes during the campaign, he said "I cannot change the past. But I can change the present and the future". Endi