Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Longtime Trump Critic, Announces American Visa Revocation

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

“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very satisfied with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a news conference.

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 statements comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and contributed to the US consulate’s decision.

Soyinka noted 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, invoking 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 somewhat unusual love letter from an embassy,”

he humorously commented while reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. 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 said.

The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, stated it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.

The current US administration has made visa revocations a signature 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 said. “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 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 left the door open 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 declared. “When we see people being arrested publicly – people being taken away and they vanish for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”

The ongoing immigration crackdown has seen security forces deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of targeted actions, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.