Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Outspoken Trump Critic, Announces American Visa Revocation
The US administration has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been vocal about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.
“I want to tell the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, informed a news conference.
Soyinka once had permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed 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 struck a nerve and led to the US consulate’s decision.
Soyinka said earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had summoned him for an interview to reassess his visa, which he stated he would not attend.
According to a communication from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, citing American government 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 jokingly stated while reciting 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, referencing confidentiality rules.
The existing US administration has made visa revocations a defining feature of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably affecting university students who were expressive 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 global standing, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,”
Soyinka said. “He’s been acting like a dictator.”
The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has taught 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 accepting 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 said. “When we see people being arrested publicly – people being hauled up 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 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.
