Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Longtime Trump Critic, Announces American Visa Cancellation
The US administration has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been outspoken about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.
“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, informed a press briefing.
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 statements comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and played a role in the US consulate’s decision.
Soyinka said earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had called him in for an interview to reevaluate his visa, which he stated he would not attend.
According to a communication from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, referencing United States 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 lightheartedly commented 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 declared.
The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, said it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.
The current US administration has made visa revocations a defining feature of its wider clampdown on immigration, notably affecting university students who were outspoken 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 worldwide recognition, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was showing him respect,”
Soyinka said. “He’s been acting 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 latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a commentary 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 continued: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”
He went on to criticise 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 apprehended and they are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”
The ongoing immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of intensive operations, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.
