How Nigerian tycoon Hassan Hammoud built Mamuda Group from leather into a $150 million conglomerate with 11,000 workers

The Challawa Industrial Area of Kano is not the kind of place that generates headlines in Lagos or London. It is a dense, hard-working strip of factories on the southern edge of the ancient commercial city, home to textile mills, food processors, chemical plants and the kind of gritty, unglamorous industry that has always been the real engine of northern Nigeria's economy. Hassan Hammoud has been there for three decades, building quietly, expanding persistently, and staying largely invisible to the national business press that gravitates toward oil money and fintech unicorns in the south.

That invisibility is ending. In May 2026, a federal court in Abuja ordered Hammoud's beverages subsidiary to halt production of its Pop Power Energy Drink, destroy all existing stock and submit to a court-supervised inventory of condemned product, after finding that it bore a striking resemblance to the Fearless Energy Drink brand owned by Rite Foods Limited. It was the second time in 18 months that a court had reached the same conclusion. The first time, Mamuda reached a settlement and promised to change its ways. Then it reintroduced the product with cosmetic adjustments, and the market called it "small Fearless."

That is where Hassan Hammoud's story has arrived. The journey to get here is something else entirely.

His father's business, his problem to solve

The Hammoud family came to Nigeria from Lebanon and built their first foothold in Kano's textile and trading sector. The founder, Mohammad Nemr Hammoud, ran his operation for decades with the discipline of a man who understood that a foreigner building a business in someone else's country had no margin for carelessness. He employed Nigerians, paid his taxes, grew gradually, and dreamed of something larger. He did not live to see what larger looked like.

When Hassan inherited what was left of the family business in the early 1990s, it was a depleted trading operation in a country going through the worst economic crisis of its post-independence history. The structural adjustment programmes of the IMF era had crushed middle-class purchasing power and decimated the consumer market. The textile sector the family had touched was contracting. Hassan, a young man still building his instincts, made a decision that shaped everything: in 1994, he started contract tanning with local tanneries in the Challawa zone.

Contract tanning is as unglamorous as it sounds. You source raw hides, negotiate with tannery operators who have the equipment you do not, and earn a margin on the processing. It is the kind of business that keeps people alive rather than making them rich. But it generates knowledge, relationships and credibility, and Hassan used all three. Within a few years, he had built Mahaza Company Limited, his own tannery, in the industrial area where he had been working as a contract operator. By 1998, he had established Mamuda Industries Nigeria Limited on the adjacent plot.

The two companies produced wet blue leather, the semi-processed hide at the intermediate stage of manufacturing. When the Nigerian government banned wet blue exports, Hammoud moved up the chain without hesitation. He merged Mahaza and Mamuda, pivoted to crust and finished leather processing, and started shipping to Europe. He had converted a government constraint into a business opportunity by the simple method of doing what the new regulation required before competitors had time to adjust.

Building the empire division by division

What followed over the next 15 years was methodical accumulation. In 2004, Mamuda bought Mario Jose Enterprise Limited, an old tannery and former competitor, absorbing its capacity and eliminating a rival in a single transaction. Three years later, Hammoud acquired Harmattan Tannery, another consolidation that deepened his dominance of Kano's leather processing sector. By the time the leather business was mature enough to manage itself, Mamuda Industries had become one of Nigeria's most significant tanneries, certified continuously by the Leather Working Group since 2022 under the environmental and quality standards that open European markets.

But Hammoud was not interested in being a leather man. He was interested in building a conglomerate.

Mamuda Agro came next, targeting the agricultural sacks market with a product that any grain trader, rice miller or commodity warehouse in northern Nigeria needed. Mamuda Foods launched a factory producing biscuits, wafers and confectionery, inserting the group into the fast-moving consumer goods category for the first time. Mamuda Care followed, manufacturing household detergents, soaps and hygiene products including Too Clean, a detergent the company marketed aggressively with a five-in-one technology claim. The group also built its own 30-megawatt gas power plant, ending its dependence on Nigeria's unreliable grid and giving Mamuda a cost advantage over competitors who were paying diesel generator rates.

By 2021, Mamuda Group was employing more than 11,000 people directly, including over 100 expatriates, with its tannery alone sourcing 20 million pieces of raw skin annually from Nigerian livestock traders. Revenue exceeded the $120 million mark by 2021. Hassan Hammoud, speaking to Daily Trust that year, described employment not as a byproduct of business but as a core measure of the group's value to society. "We are motivated by the fact that we are contributing our quota in job provision," he said. It was the statement of a man who understood that in Kano, where youth unemployment is severe and the political temperature responds to economic desperation, a factory with 11,000 workers is not just a business. It is a social infrastructure project.

The beverages bet and the brand ambassador

When Hassan Hammoud decided to enter the beverages sector, he entered it the way a man who had spent 25 years in industrial manufacturing enters any new market: by building a factory, installing equipment and launching product. Mamuda Beverages Nigeria Limited opened in Kano producing Pop Cola, Pop Power Energy Drink and bottled water. The brand was called Pop.

At the factory commissioning in 2021, Hammoud signed Nigerian Super Eagles captain Ahmed Musa as Pop Cola's brand ambassador. It was his savviest marketing move, and he knew it. Musa is more than a footballer in Kano. He is an institution, a man who has funded mosques, hospitals and charity work across the city with a loyalty and generosity that the Kano public repays with devotion. Attaching Pop Cola to Musa's name was not a sponsorship. It was a statement of civic identity.

In December 2024, Hammoud commissioned expanded production facilities in Kano. The following May, he traveled to Abeokuta to meet Ogun State Governor Dapo Abiodun and announced a $50 million investment plan for a new Mamuda Beverages factory in the southwestern state, designed to employ 1,500 workers in its first phase and grow to 3,000. The governor welcomed him warmly. The foundation stone was scheduled. The press coverage was positive.

What was not in the press coverage was that Mamuda Beverages was, at that precise moment, already in court over its energy drink.

The Rite Foods litigation

Rite Foods Limited had registered the distinctive bottle design of its Fearless Energy Drink under Nigeria's Patents and Designs Act in August 2020. The bottle was its commercial identity, the thing that made Fearless recognisable at a glance in a crowded cooler full of competing products. When Pop Power Energy Drink appeared in the market, Rite Foods saw something that looked like Fearless in a smaller can, bearing a lion head logo in a familiar arrangement, and went straight to court.

Justice Inyang Ekwo of the Federal High Court granted a temporary halt on Pop Power production in January 2025. Mamuda sought a settlement. Terms were agreed, signed and entered as a court consent judgment. Under those terms, Mamuda committed to stop violating the Fearless trademark, destroy existing infringing products and redesign its packaging.

Pop Power came back. Market sources and court documents described the revised product as bearing changes that were cosmetic rather than substantive. The informal name that circulated for it in markets and kiosks was "small Fearless." When that language is being used by the people buying and selling your product, your trademark defence has already failed in the court of consumer perception even before a judge rules on it.

Rite Foods filed a fresh suit. Justice Binta Murtala-Nyako dismissed Mamuda's preliminary objection, which had tried to argue the second case was an abuse of process, and granted Rite Foods the interlocutory injunction it sought on May 22, 2026. The court held on its face that the redesigned Pop Power bottle still bore a striking resemblance to Fearless. Mamuda was ordered to stop production immediately, destroy all stock and cooperate with a bailiff-supervised inventory. The injunction runs until December 2026 at the earliest. The substantive hearing is September 23.

Mamuda fought back in the press. A statement published in Leadership newspaper framed the suit as legal intimidation of a rising competitor, noting that Rite Foods had previously sued Nigerian Breweries over Predator Energy Drink in a case that was dismissed. The argument was that Rite Foods was litigating against competition rather than legitimate infringement. The court did not agree. Twice.

What remains

Hassan Hammoud has built something substantial. The leather business is internationally certified and exports to Europe. The agro, food and care divisions supply millions of Nigerian consumers. The power plant gives the group an industrial advantage that most rivals cannot replicate. The group employs over 11,000 people in a part of Nigeria where formal employment is a serious social good.

The beverages division is the shadow on that record. A settlement reached, then violated. A product informally known by the name of the brand it was accused of copying. Two court orders running against the same company in less than 18 months over the same product. The Ogun expansion remains on the table, and Hammoud has not retreated from his ambitions. But the credibility of a group that spent three decades building its reputation on leather quality certifications and community employment is now being tested in a courtroom over a bottle shape.

The September hearing will determine what happens to Pop Power permanently. Until then, the shelves where it used to sit are quiet. Fearless still holds them.