Building strong institutions key in nation’s development, says Jonathan

Former President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, on Monday in Abuja said building strong institutions was key in the development of a nation.

Jonathan stated this in his home while receiving a report from the Strategy Review and Inter-Party Affairs Committee of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

He said that he had the strong belief that for a nation to grow, its institutions must be very strong, adding that that was needed in Nigeria currently.

“There is no way a nation will grow with weak institutions, because everything about politics is about the people, not about the individuals.

“As long you are interested in the people, you are interested in the growth of the society and the development of the nation.

“The only thing that will make this possible is that the institutions must be strong.

“You see as powerful as America, look at President Donald Trump’s decision and the court said `no you can’t do this’ and of course, they have to shut down the decision to move forward.

“That is the strength of an institution. That is the only way individuals could be regulated so that you can grow,” Jonathan said.

He said that the PDP still remained the biggest and the strongest political party in Nigeria irrespective of what happened in the 2015 general elections.

“Yes, we lost the presidential election but that doesn’t diminish us. Every other party still knows that PDP is a leading party.

“Losing the presidency is something temporary. We should be able to get that position back as long as we are able to get our acts together.

“I am happy that you people are working towards that,” he added.

The former president also stated that direct primary, especially under presidential system of government, was the ultimate and best way of selecting candidates for elections.

He, however, remarked that the greatest problem was how to manage the direct primaries.

He said that for a party like PDP, with true membership across all polling units, it meant that voting would take place at wards or local government levels.

“The best way to stop imposition is to make sure that people don’t control the delegates.

“How to select delegate is that at least 70 per cent of the delegates should not be under the control of anybody.”

Jonathan said that if the party could not do direct primaries, it should make sure that it increased the number of statutory delegates with people who had held elected or party offices at different levels.

He said that the party could come up with criteria where its national chairman, state chairmen, senators and others in offices that controlled the government were made statutory delegates.

“All these group of people if they are still in the party should be automatic delegates.

“These are people that are known by everybody and nobody can go and manipulate them or their names.

“By the time we have a reasonable number of statutory delegates who are more than 75 per cent of total delegates that will vote, then, it will be difficult for somebody to go and manipulate the list,” he said.

Jonathan commended the committee for the report as well as Sen. Ahmed Makarfi and the National Caretaker Committee for the vision in setting up the committee.

“This is the only way to strengthen political parties. It is a clear sign that PDP will win in 2019,” he said.

Presenting the report earlier, Chairman of the committee, Prof. Jerry Gana, said that they had submitted the report to the party leadership on Tuesday and were directed to submit a copy to the former president.

Gana said that the report contained thoughtful recommendations that would help PDP to be strong and win future elections.