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ABUJA, Nigeria (CNN) -- Two Nigerian parties named former finance minister Olu Falae on Tuesday as presidential challenger to Gen. Olusegun Obasanjo, the ex-military ruler attempting an election comeback two decades after relinquishing power.

Falae, 60, was nominated by the Alliance for Democracy (AD) and All Peoples Party (APP) for the February 27 ballot.

The parties backing Falae came together, despite serious misgivings among many of their members, as the only way to challenge the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which swept more than half the vote in recent local and state elections.

"I am contesting for the APP because of our alliance agreement and the fact that the electoral commission allows us to use only one symbol," Falae told Reuters. He was originally a member of the southwestern-based AD.

The nomination of Falae means both candidates are from Nigeria's ethnic Yoruba southwest region, which has felt excluded from power since the annulment of 1993 elections that local tycoon Moshood Abiola was poised to win.

Obasanjo won the just under 70 percent of the delegates' votes for the PDP nomination on Monday, making him the most likely candidate to win the February 27 election, after which the military has promised to restore civilian rule.

"My joy knows no bounds," Obasanjo said in his acceptance speech. "I will devote all my energy and all the powers available to me to the service of Nigeria and humanity."

Obasanjo, in his early 60s, is now seen as the strongest contender to lead the country back to civilian rule -- and out of poverty, ethnic divisions and widespread corruption.

Nigeria, which has been ruled by military leaders for all but 10 years since independence from Britain in 1960, has been moving toward civilian rule since the death of dictator Gen. Sani Abacha in June.

Abacha's successor, Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, has vowed repeatedly to hand power over to a civilian administration in May.

Obasanjo was released from prison after the death of Abacha, who had accused him of plotting a coup.

Obasanjo ruled Nigeria for three years before giving up power voluntarily to an elected government in 1979 -- the only Nigerian military ruler ever to do so.

Although he refused at first to seek the presidency he gave up in 1979, friends at home and abroad convinced him he was the man who could lead Africa's most populous nation into its latest attempt at democracy.

His enemies, however, accuse him of being a stooge of the military and the Muslim north, which has dominated Nigerian political life since independence.

But Obasanjo says he supports democracy. "Democracy may not necessarily ensure rapid economic development of affluence but it is, at least, the best form of government that ensures reasonable participation," he wrote in his book, "Not My Will," published in 1990.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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