🔗 Share this article

The United States administration has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been critical about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.

“I want to tell the consulate … that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, addressed a press briefing.

Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he discarded his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

Soyinka surmised that his recent comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction and led to the US consulate’s decision.

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

According to a communication from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have terminated his visa, referencing United States 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 somewhat unusual love letter from an embassy,”

he humorously remarked while reciting 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 present US administration has made visa revocations a signature of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably focusing on university students who were vocal about Palestinian rights.

Soyinka mentioned 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 showing him respect,”

Soyinka commented. “He’s been conducting himself as a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has lectured at 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 critique about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021. Soyinka referred to the book as his “gift to Nigeria”.

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

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

He went on to denounce the increased arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“This is not about me,” Soyinka said. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being apprehended and they are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”

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