The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Godwin Emefiele, has said the way to know a policy that works in the country, is when it is being criticised.

Emefiele said such policies were criticised because people find it difficult to circumvent them.

He made this declaration while delivering a lecture entitled, ‘Managing monetary policy in turbulent times’, to participants of the Senior Executive Course 38 at the National Institute of Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) in Kuru, near Jos, on Friday.

He pointed out that, “developments over the last two years show that these are not normal times by any stretch of imagination,” noting that, “the CBN has always tried to act in good faith, with the best available information and in cognizance of current economic conditions, to pursue the goals of price and financial system stability, as well as catalyse job creation and inclusive growth in the country.”

During his lecture, the CBN governor said that, “when you have policies that people are praising, that means such policies are not really good, because the people praising the policies know that they can circumvent them.

“But if people criticise your policies, especially in Nigeria, such policies are good; the people criticise them because they know that they cannot circumvent them.”

He, therefore, urged that, “we should remain resolutely committed to the course and be motivated by the achievability of our desire to strengthen the economic fundamentals.”

Emefiele was also of the opinion that one of the ways to grow our economy is to stop the importation of goods such as toothpick, beef and eggs, stating that they could be produced locally.

He recalled that 20 years ago, “we had textile, groundnut pyramids, Cocoa with which the legendary Cocoa House was built and palm oil.

‘‘We also used revenue from agriculture to build our economy. But after we found oil, we abandoned all that for easy money.

“Today, we are suffering the consequences. With the size and structure of the country’s import bills, it is apparent that we as a people cannot continue to depend on other countries for things that can easily be produced locally, adding that, by so doing, we are merely exporting jobs and importing poverty.

“How do we justify the importation of items like eggs from South Africa, beef from Zambia and toothpick from China?” he queried.

The CBN decried the situation where huge sums of money were spent abroad by Nigerians instead of in the country. He said institutions should be strengthened as many of the professionals abroad were Nigerians.