Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Trump Critic, Reports US Visa Revocation

The American authorities has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been critical about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.

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

Soyinka previously held 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 comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction and led to the US consulate’s decision.

Soyinka mentioned earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had summoned him for an interview to reassess his visa, which he declared he would not attend.

According to a communication from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have terminated his visa, citing United States 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 commented while reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. He also advised 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 targeting university students who were vocal about Palestinian rights.

Soyinka mentioned he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he stated 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 acting like a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has taught at and been recognized by 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 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 entertaining 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 criticise the escalated arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

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

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