Former President Goodluck Jonathan has picked the expression of interest and nomination forms to contest the 2023 presidential election on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
A northern group picked the forms on behalf of Jonathan at the International Conference Centre (ICC) in Abuja, on Monday evening.
Jonathan is yet to announce his defection from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the APC.
He took over power when the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua died in 2010 and contested the 2011 election, which he won.
He lost his reelection to President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 and acknowledged defeat before the final collation of the election results.
Daily Trust reliably gathered that two influential governors from the northern part of the country are behind the return bid of Jonathan.
Multiple sources, who are in the know, said the two governors, close to Buhari, have secured the buy-in of a section of the presidency to actualise their agenda of drafting the former president into the presidential race.
While one of the governors is from the North West, the other is from the North East geopolitical zone.
The two governors have been playing key roles in the affairs of the APC in the last few years.
Earlier in the month he told some of his supporters who were insisting he should declare to “be on the watch”, a disposition political pundits described as acceptance.
In the last seven years, the former president has not been attending activities of his party. This is just as his romance with President Buhari and top shots of the ruling party takes the centre stage, a development that has pitched him against opposition leaders in the country.