Wole Soyinka, Longtime Trump Critic, Announces US Visa Revocation

The US government has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been vocal about Trump since his earlier presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.

“I want to inform the consulate … that I’m very content with the termination of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, addressed a press briefing.

Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he discarded 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 requested his presence for an interview to reassess 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 American government 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 reading 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 declared.

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

The current US administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably affecting university students who were vocal about Palestinian rights.

Soyinka mentioned he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he remarked 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 commented. “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 commentary 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 accepting 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 criticise the escalated 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 are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what worries me.”

The ongoing immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of targeted actions, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.