José Mujica of Uruguay is the world’s poorest president. He was the 40th president of his country, Uruguay.
While in office between 2010 and 2015, Mujica was described as being “the world’s poorest president” due to his austere lifestyle and his donation of around 90 percent of his US$12,000 monthly salary to charities that support low-income individuals and small entrepreneurs.
A former guerrilla with the Tupamaros, he was tortured and imprisoned for 14 years during the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s.
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Mujica was the minister of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries from 2005 to 2008 and a senator afterwards. As the candidate of the Broad Front, he won the 2009 presidential election and took office as president on 1 March 2010.
He was born May 20, 1935, and died May 13, 2025.
The world will forever remember this leader for not amassing and living a modest life while here on Earth.
Mujica once asked the elites in his country, “What is the essence of stealing money you can not spend? What is the need to impoverish your people, and in the end, it is all vanity? Why will you stack your nation’s wealth in foreign banks when your people can not afford a meal daily? Do you remember you will one day leave this world without the money you stole while in power?”
Yes Mujica is no more but he left a legacy of honesty, integrity, selflessness, service and fear of God. Not one percent of the population of today’s world leaders can replicate this rare character of contentment. The closest we had in Africa was Julius Nyerere, the late Tanzanian leader with a bicycle.
Rest in peace, true leader, Mujica.
© DESMOND EKWUEME
