Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Longtime Trump Critic, Reports American Visa Termination
The US government has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been vocal about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.
“I want to tell the consulate … that I’m very content with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, addressed a news conference.
Soyinka previously held 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 noted earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had called him in 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 cancelled his visa, referencing 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 rather curious love letter from an embassy,”
he humorously commented while reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. He also advised 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, said it could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules.
The current US administration has made visa revocations a signature of its wider clampdown on immigration, notably targeting university students who were expressive about Palestinian rights.
Soyinka mentioned he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he stated 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 explained. “He’s been conducting himself as 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 newest 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 left the door open to entertaining 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 condemn the escalated arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“This is not about me,” Soyinka emphasized. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being apprehended and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”
The current immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of aggressive raids, as well as the limiting of legal means of entry.
