The just concluded 2024 Minna Polo Tournament provided a perfect platform for Nigeria's most successful polo team, EL-Amin, to celebrate another milestone of Nigerian polo dominance in the past 29 years.
Hosted by the Niger State Government, that grand event pitted some of the biggest names in Nigerian polo against one another.
And expectedly, EL-Amin extended their IBB Cup supremacy and also added three of the four major prizes at stake for effect, to celebrate their three decades of polo successes in style.
EL-Amin made winning looks easy, as the team retained its cherished IBB Cup and the Abdulsalami Cup respectively in traditional sublime displays. El Amin also won the Governor's Cup.
EL-Amin's latest addition, the Phoenix, loaded with the team's second-generation players, won the Aisha Babangida Cup on its tournament debut to provide the electrifying atmosphere for the celebration of this great milestone.
"I'm proud of the last 29 years. It has been an unbelievable journey," began Mohammed Babangida who is the President of Kaduna Polo Club said with pride. "I'm not too sure it's the end yet. There is a lot to happen with the EL-Amin team.
"Between 1995 and 1998 when we started, we were trying to get a strong team, good horses, and good care in terms of support, but we were not able to do that and every tournament we went to, we were beaten and we had to sit back and reassess the whole situation," recalled Babangida.
Since making its debut in Nigeria's polo scene, EL-Amin has won every conceivable tournament and trophy on sight, making it not only Nigeria's best and dominant team but one of the finest outfits in the world as well.
A peep into its trophy chest proves just how massive and impressive their collections look. The haul over the past two decades have been massive. With Ibrahim Mohammed and Bello Buba as the other key players, EL-Amin has won the prestigious Georgian Cup a record 15 times!
El Amin remains the only team to have won all high-goal cups across Nigeria, which include the IBB Cup, Majekodunmi Cup, Emir of Katsina Cup, Nigerian Cup, General Hassan Cup, and Rubicon Turf Polo crown in Abuja, in addition to hauling laurels outside the country.
In 2019 the Guinness Book of World Records recognised the Georgian Cup as the oldest polo prize in the world and EL-Amin is the team with the longest winning streak.
EL-Amin is the first and only African team to play in the prestigious Dubai Gold Cup series in 2009, and the Al-Habtoor Cup Challenge in Dubai.
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Mohammed Babangida, as national team captain, led the Nigerian Polo Eagles to the Federation of International Polo (FIP) World Cup tournament in Malaysia in June 2011 and the Nations Cup of polo in South Africa.
Amidst this milestone celebration, the trophy photographs, and the praise for players and patrons, what one must not forget, is the incredible turnaround in fortunes that the Kaduna polo kings managed to pull off within and outside the country.
The result of that reassessment is that from 1999 when they won their first Georgian Trophy title, the fortunes of El-Amin have changed to what it is today.
Not only is El-Amin Nigeria's best polo team, but the team has become a brand whose incredible successes have not only earned and enhanced its fan base, but have attracted more people to the sport itself.
