Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Longtime Trump Critic, Reveals US Visa Revocation
The United States government has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been critical about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.
“I want to inform the consulate … that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, informed a press briefing.
Soyinka formerly possessed permanent residency in the United States, though he tore up his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.
Soyinka speculated that his recent comments 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 summoned him for an interview to reevaluate his visa, which he declared he would not attend.
According to a communication from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have terminated his visa, referencing US state department 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 rather curious love letter from an embassy,”
he lightheartedly remarked while reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. He also informed 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, indicated it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.
The existing US administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably affecting university students who were expressive 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 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 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 remained open to considering 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 increased arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“This is not about me,” Soyinka said. “When we see people being arrested publicly – people being taken away and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”
The current immigration crackdown has seen security forces deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of intensive operations, as well as the limiting of legal means of entry.