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Opera reboots Live Scores feature in Opera Mini to provide in-depth football experience right in the browser

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Oslo, Norway – April 11th, 2023 – Opera – the company behind the family of popular mobile browsers that boast over 100 million monthly active users across Africa – is announcing an exciting new browser mode for football fans. The reboot will offer an in-depth football experience built right into the data-saving Opera Mini Browser, enabling fans to follow action from around the globe without having to download an additional application.

During the World Cup in 2022, Opera introduced Live Scores to the Opera Mini Browser, in which a scoreboard was installed right on the Opera Mini homepage so that fans did not have to jump to different sites to stay on top of the action – and thereby expend additional data. Now, Live Scores is set to receive a huge upgrade. No longer just a scoreboard, Live Scores 2.0 will provide a suite of features that will enable users to have the world of football at their fingertips, right from within Opera Mini.

To start, users will be able to customize their football experience by following their favorite teams and competitions. Over 8,000 teams will be available from around the world, including, of course, global favorites from the Premier League, Champions League, and beyond. Users can then track any game they like from a new Match List page. With a summary of kick-off times and live scores, users can follow multiple matches across numerous leagues at once.

And when fans want to know more about what’s going on in a particular match, they can now click to get a detailed picture of all the action. Users can toggle through the line-ups, read running commentary, and see match statistics to know who has scored, assisted, been booked, substituted – all the most pressing information, immediately available right in the Opera Mini Browser. Users can even join thousands of other fans in a running poll predicting what the result of the match will be.

A final feature of the rebooted Live Scores is Live Match Alerts, in which users can receive notifications for all matches involving their favorite teams. Additionally available for whichever matches that users just wants to follow (an edition of El Clásico, for example), the alerts will keep fans updated regarding kickoff times, goals, red cards, penalties, and the full-time result.

Opera has always been sensitive to what users want: what they love and enjoy. The company has long shared a passion for football with its users, and has brought football-focused products to the market such as the Apex Football app and website, which now has over 12M monthly users.

Moreover, Opera kicked off the recent World Cup with “Shake and Win,” the company’s popular contest that gave fans the chance to win prizes including airtime, cash, and brand-new phones. Opera users in Africa responded enthusiastically, with over 13 million participants from across the continent shaking their phones over 1,000,000 times a day. In all, winners collected more than 200,000 prizes as Opera Mini shot to #1 in the Google Play Store in both Nigeria and Kenya.

To experience a one-stop football experience, download Opera Mini for free from the Google Play Store.

About Opera

Opera is a global web innovator with an engaged and growing base of hundreds of millions of monthly active users who seek a better internet experience. Building on over 25 years of innovation that started with browser products, Opera is now leveraging its brand and highly engaged user base in order to expand its business into new segments. Today, Opera offers users around the world a range of products and services that include PC and mobile browsers, the newsreader Opera News, and apps dedicated to gaming, e-commerce, and classifieds. Opera is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, and listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange (OPRA).

About Opera Mini

Launched in 2006, Opera Mini is a small, fast, and powerful browser. It comes with unique features such as Data Compression, Offline File Sharing, and a built-in ad-blocker. Today, Opera Mini is used by more than 100 million people who chose it over the pre-installed browsers on Android mobile devices. Opera Mini has a 4.4 star rating on Google Play and has been reviewed by more than eight million people worldwide.

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Business

Tax Reform Bills: The Verdict of Nigerians

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Ismaila Ahmad Abdullahi Ph.D

The public hearings conducted recently by the two Chambers of the National Assembly have elicited positive responses from a broad spectrum of Nigerians, cutting across regional interest groups, government agencies, civil society groups, concerned individuals, the academia, and Labour Unions, among diverse others. Contrary to a few dissensions hitherto expressed in the media, almost all the stakeholders who spoke during the week-long sessions were unanimous in their declaration that the hallowed Chambers should pass the tax reform bills after a clean-up of the grey areas.

The public hearings were auspicious for all Nigerians desirous of economic growth and fiscal responsibility. They were also a watershed moment for the Federal Inland Revenue Service, which had been upbeat about the tax reforms. Indeed, the public hearings had rekindled hope in the tenets of democracy that guarantee freedom of expression and equitable space for cross-fertilisation of ideas. Without gainsaying the fact, the tax reform bills have been unarguably about the most thought-provoking issues in Nigeria today, drawing variegated perspectives and commentaries from even unlikely quarters such as the faith-based leaders, student bodies, and trade unions, which speaks much about the importance of the bills.

In the build-up to the public hearings, not many people believed that the bills would make it to the second reading, much less the public hearings. Even the Northern stakeholders who seemed unlikely to support the passage of the bills have softened their stance and have given valuable suggestions that would enrich the substance of the bills. The Arewa Consultative Forum came to the public hearings well-prepared with a printed booklet that addressed their concerns. It concluded with an advisory that the bills should be “Well planned, properly communicated, strategically implemented and ample dialogue and political consensus allowed for the reforms to be accepted.”

The concerns of ACF ranged from the composition of the proposed Nigeria Revenue Service Board as contained in Part 111, Section 7 of the bill, the unlimited Presidential power to exempt/wave tax payment as proposed in Section 75(1) of the bill, the family income or inheritance tax as contained in Part 1, Section 4(3) of the bill, to the issues around development levy and VAT. On the development levy, the ACF stated that unless the Federal Government is considering budgetary funding for TETFUND, NASENI and NITDA, it does not see the “wisdom behind the plan to replace (them) with NELFUND”.

The position of the North was equally reinforced by the Supreme Council for Shariah in Nigeria, Northern Elders Forum, Kano State Government, Professor Auwalu Yadudu, and the FCT Imams. Like the ACF, these stakeholders lent their respective voices to the Section on the Inheritance Tax in Part 1 of the bill and the use of the term ‘ecclesiastical’, which, in their views, undermines certain religious rights and beliefs. The Kano State Government, represented by Mahmud Sagagi, affirmed that “we support tax modernisation” but cautioned that “we must ensure that this process does not come at the expense of states’ constitutional rights and economic stability”. Professor Auwalu Yadudu, a constitutional law professor, drew attention to the use of the ‘supremacy clause’ and cautioned that the repeated use of “notwithstanding” in the bills would undermine the supremacy of the Nigerian constitution if passed as such.

Other stakeholders that made contributions at the sessions included the Nigeria Liquefied Natural Gas, Fiscal Responsibility Commission, Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria, Chartered Institute of Taxation of Nigeria, Nigeria Customs Service, and a host of others. While most of their concerns bordered on technical issues requiring fine-tuning, they were unanimous in their support for the bills. They aligned with the position of the Executive Chairman of the Federal Inland Revenue Service, Zacch Adedeji, Ph.D. and the Chairman of the Presidential Committee on Fiscal Policy and Tax Reforms, Mr Taiwo Oyedele, which is that the extant tax laws and fiscal regulations are obsolete necessitating reforms aimed at creating a fair and equitable tax and fiscal space to grow Nigeria’s economy.

In one of the sessions, Dr Zaach Adedeji expounded on the criss-cross of trade activities in the Free Trade Zone whereby companies misuse tax waivers as exporters to sell their goods or services in the Customs Area at an amount usually less than the price the operators in the Customs Area who pay VAT and other taxes sell theirs thereby disrupting business transactions. This way, the operators in the Free Trade Zone shortchange the government in paying their due taxes by circumventing extant regulations, which are inimical to the economy’s growth.

Overall, the presentations were forthright, foresighted, and helpful in elucidating the issues contained in the bills. According to the statistics read out at the end of the hearings at the Senate, 75 stakeholders were invited, 65 made submissions, and 61 made presentations. At the House of Representatives 53 stakeholders made presentations. By all means, this is a fair representation. Given the presentations, it is evident that the National Assembly has gathered enough materials to guide its deliberations on the bills. As we look forward to the passage of the bills, we commend the leadership of the National Assembly for their unwavering commitment to making the bills see the light of the day.

Abdullahi is the Director of the Communications and Liaison Department, FIRS.

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