The United States government has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been outspoken about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.
“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very content with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a media gathering.
Soyinka once had 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 remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and played a role in the US consulate’s decision.
Soyinka mentioned earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had called him in for an interview to reassess his visa, which he said he would not attend.
According to a communication from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, referencing American government regulations that authorize “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 stated 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 declared.
The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, stated it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.
The existing US administration has made visa revocations a defining feature of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably affecting university students who were outspoken about Palestinian rights.
Soyinka said he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he remarked Trump “should be proud of”.
“Idi Amin was a man of international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,”
Soyinka explained. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”
The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has lectured at and been awarded honours 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 described 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 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 said. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being hauled up and they are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”
The current immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of aggressive raids, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.
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