Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Trump Critic, Reveals American Visa Cancellation
The US government has cancelled 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 tell the consulate … that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a media gathering.
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 remarks 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 summoned him for an interview to review his visa, which he said he would not attend.
According to a letter from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, invoking American government regulations that permit “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 humorously stated while presenting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre. 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 said.
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 defining feature of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably targeting university students who were vocal about Palestinian rights.
Soyinka revealed he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he stated 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 paying him a compliment,”
Soyinka commented. “He’s been acting like 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 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 did not rule out to entertaining 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 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 apprehended 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 military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of targeted actions, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.
