Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Trump Critic, Reports US Visa Cancellation
The United States authorities has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been outspoken about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.
“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very content with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a news conference.
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 remarks 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 review his visa, which he said he would not attend.
According to a letter from the consulate directed at 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 rather curious love letter from an embassy,”
he jokingly stated while reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. 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 affirmed.
The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, indicated it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.
The current US administration has made visa revocations a signature of its wider clampdown on immigration, notably focusing on university students who were expressive about Palestinian rights.
Soyinka revealed he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he remarked Trump “should be proud of”.
“Idi Amin was a man of international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was giving him praise,”
Soyinka said. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”
The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has taught at and been given awards top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.
His newest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a critique 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 emphasized. “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 recent immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of intensive operations, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.