Wole Soyinka, Trump Critic, Reveals American Visa Termination

The United States government has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been outspoken about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.

“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a media gathering.

Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he discarded his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

Soyinka surmised that his recent statements comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and led 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 said he would not attend.

According to a letter from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, invoking 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 quite peculiar love letter from an embassy,”

he humorously remarked 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 said.

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 defining feature of its wider restrictions 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 international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was giving him praise,”

Soyinka said. “He’s been conducting himself as a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has lectured at and been given awards top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.

His latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a critique 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 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 denounce 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 apprehended and they are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”

The ongoing immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of intensive operations, as well as the limiting of legal means of entry.