Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Trump Critic, Reports American Visa Revocation
The American authorities has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been critical about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.
“I want to inform the consulate … that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a media gathering.
Soyinka formerly possessed permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed 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 caused offense and contributed 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 review his visa, which he stated he would not attend.
According to a communication from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have terminated his visa, citing 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 quite peculiar love letter from an embassy,”
he lightheartedly commented while presenting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. 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 hallmark of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably targeting university students who were outspoken about Palestinian rights.
Soyinka revealed 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 giving him praise,”
Soyinka commented. “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 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 continued: “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 emphasized. “When we see people being detained arbitrarily – people being taken away and they vanish for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”
The current immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of intensive operations, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.
