🔗 Share this article

The American authorities has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been outspoken about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.

“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very satisfied with the termination of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a press briefing.

Soyinka once had permanent residency in the United States, though he tore up his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

Soyinka speculated that his recent remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction and played a role in the US consulate’s decision.

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

According to a communication from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, invoking American government regulations that allow “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 somewhat unusual love letter from an embassy,”

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

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

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

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

Soyinka revealed he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he remarked 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 said. “He’s been acting like a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has lectured at and been given awards top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.

His most recent novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a critique 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 entertaining 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 denounce the ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

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

The recent immigration crackdown has seen security forces deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of intensive operations, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.