Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Trump Critic, Reveals US Visa Cancellation
The United States authorities has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been critical about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.
“I want to tell the consulate … that I’m very satisfied with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a news conference.
Soyinka previously held 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 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 summoned him for an interview to review his visa, which he declared he would not attend.
According to a document from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, invoking United States 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 commented while reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. 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 declared.
The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, said it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.
The present US administration has made visa revocations a hallmark 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 giving him praise,”
Soyinka explained. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”
The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has taught at and been awarded honours top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.
His most recent novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a commentary 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 left the door 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 condemn the ramped-up 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 are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what worries me.”
The recent immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of targeted actions, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.