🔗 Share this article

The American government has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been vocal about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.

“I want to inform the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a media gathering.

Soyinka formerly possessed permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

Soyinka suggested that his recent remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense and contributed to the US consulate’s decision.

Soyinka noted earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had requested his presence for an interview to reevaluate his visa, which he declared he would not attend.

According to a communication from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, referencing American government regulations that permit “a consular officer, the secretary, or a department official to whom the secretary has delegated this authority … to revoke a nonimmigrant visa at any time, in his or her discretion”.

“This is a quite peculiar love letter from an embassy,”

he humorously commented while reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre. He also informed any organizations hoping to invite him to the United States “not to waste their time”.

“I have no visa. I am banned,” Soyinka said.

The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, stated it could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules.

The present US administration has made visa revocations a signature of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably focusing on university students who were expressive about Palestinian rights.

Soyinka revealed he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he said Trump “should be proud of”.

“Idi Amin was a man of global standing, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,”

Soyinka commented. “He’s been acting like a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has worked for and been recognized by top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.

His latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a satire about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021. Soyinka called the book as his “gift to Nigeria”.

In February, the Crucible theatre in Sheffield staged Death and the King’s Horseman.

Soyinka did not rule out to considering an invitation to the United States should circumstances change, but stated: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”

He went on to condemn the escalated arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“This is not about me,” Soyinka emphasized. “When we see people being arrested publicly – people being taken away and they vanish for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”

The current immigration crackdown has seen security forces deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of intensive operations, as well as the limiting of legal means of entry.