Wole Soyinka, Longtime Trump Critic, Reports American Visa Cancellation
The American administration 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 disclosed on Tuesday.
“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very satisfied with the termination of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a media gathering.
Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he tore up his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.
Soyinka surmised that his recent remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and contributed to the US consulate’s decision.
Soyinka mentioned earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had called him in for an interview to reassess his visa, which he stated he would not attend.
According to a document from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have terminated his visa, invoking US state department 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 jokingly remarked while reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre. 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 declared.
The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, stated it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.
The present US administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably affecting university students who were outspoken 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 worldwide recognition, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was showing him respect,”
Soyinka explained. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”
The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has worked for and been given awards top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.
His most recent 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 added: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”
He went on to denounce 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 apprehended and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”
The recent immigration crackdown has seen security forces deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of intensive operations, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.
