By Princewill Ekwujuru

The findings of recent survey of private equity backed companies indicates that the popular perception of private equity as an investor is only involved for short term gains as this couldn’t be far from the truth as propounded by Price Water  Corporation, PwC. The reality is that private equity houses appear to be more willing to finance companies than traditional lenders are prepared to invest for growth.

The survey of nearly 100 private equity backed companies showed that 74 percent of portfolio companies said their private equity backers were willing to invest more capital into their businesses, compared to 66 percent of respondents saying the same about their lenders – with more than a third of portfolio companies saying their lenders were not willing to extend further facilities.

Overtime, private-equity performance has been misunderstood in some essential ways. It now seems that the private-equity industry decisively outperforms public equities with respect to risk-adjusted returns, which may prompt return-starved institutional investors to allocate even more capital to the asset class.

Invariably this good news comes with a question mark: top private-equity firms now seem less able to produce consistently successful funds, this the Ikeja Electric, IE, a distribution company had succeed in, acquiring about $106 million (N21.2 billion) under its Advanced Metering Infrastructure, AMI, would assist in curtailing energy theft and put an end to estimated billing system.

Recently, IE, which emerged after the unbundling of the Power Holding Company of Nigeria, PHCN, in a press briefing showed a  new way of changing the perception of  its consumers in the face of  challenges faced by electricity consumers in that zone, and the effort to reposition the company.

Vanguard sampled the opinion of consumers in that zone and got the following reaction from some consumers: In the face of IE, their lenders or personally sourced financier will be ready to invest more because the impact of right billing will be a major advantage for the distribution company, said Louis Eze, a consumer in Ikeja.

A business owner in Ikeja, Morgan Nwachukwu said: “We know electricity is deplete in Nigeria as a whole, but if the said meter is introduced it would be a relief for us business people, because we can only pay for energy consumed. Meter tempering will reduce as we learnt the meter is temper sensitive, may be also monthly service charge not carried out will stop.”

“This attempt by IE will restore the confidence of electricity consumers in the zone, and Nigeria generally,” Kingsley Alle stated. “If this works, other Discos may be tempted to toe the line of IE,” Godwin Ifeajuna noted. Before now, the metering system in the electricity industry in Nigeria has been embarrassing and had depleted the pockets of consumers.

To put an end to this, the Managing Director of Ikeja Electric, Mr. Abiodun Ajifowobaje, said in Ikeja, that the metering initiative known as smart metering, would address some challenges associated with billing system. Ajifowobaje said the pilot project started last month with test-run of 2,000 meters for consumers who had electricity challenges or non-functional meters in the six business districts in the zone.