Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Outspoken Trump Critic, Reveals American Visa Termination
The United States authorities has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been outspoken about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.
“I want to tell the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the termination of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, informed a news conference.
Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he discarded his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.
Soyinka surmised that his recent comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense 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 reassess his visa, which he said he would not attend.
According to a letter from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have revoked 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 remarked while reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. 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 affirmed.
The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, indicated it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.
The present US administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably focusing on university students who were expressive about Palestinian rights.
Soyinka said 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 worked for 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 satire about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021. Soyinka called 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 ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“This is not about me,” Soyinka declared. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being hauled up and they are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”
The recent immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of intensive operations, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.
