Wole Soyinka, Trump Critic, Reports US Visa Cancellation

The American government has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been critical about Trump since his earlier presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.

“I want to tell the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a media gathering.

Soyinka once had permanent residency in the United States, though he tore up his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

Soyinka suggested that his recent statements comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense and played a role in the US consulate’s decision.

Soyinka noted 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 sent to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, referencing US state department 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 remarked while presenting 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, referencing 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 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 lectured at and been given awards top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.

His latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a satire 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 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 declared. “When we see people being detained arbitrarily – people being apprehended 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 military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of aggressive raids, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.