Former President Goodluck Jonathan has expressed happiness at plans put in place by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to regain power at the central.

He said this when he hosted stakeholders of the party at his Abuja residence on Monday.

Jonathan said the loss experienced by the party in 2015 was a temporary setback.

He said “PDP is leading”.

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

“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.”

Jonathan said the court’s rejection of Donald Trump’s order was a measure needed in Nigeria at the moment.

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

“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.

“As powerful as America is, President Donald Trump took a 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.”

The former President also said imposition of candidates must be stopped.

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

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

He said 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,” he said.

“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.”