In times of economic turbulence, inflation control is often the rallying cry of central bankers. The blunt tightening of monetary policy, raising interest rates and locking away massive portions of banks’ deposits under the CRR. Differentiated reserve requirements can reward banks’ lending to productive sectors while penalizing speculative lending. Yet Nigeria’s banking fragility cannot be laid at the feet of monetary policy alone. The result is a distorted system where banks prefer risk-free lending to the government over financing the real economy.