Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Outspoken Trump Critic, Reports US Visa Termination
The US government has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been outspoken about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.
“I want to tell the consulate … that I’m very satisfied with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, informed 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 statements comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction and contributed to the US consulate’s decision.
Soyinka said earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had summoned him for an interview to review his visa, which he declared he would not attend.
According to a document from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, invoking United States 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 humorously commented while reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. 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, referencing confidentiality rules.
The current US administration has made visa revocations a signature of its wider restrictions 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 stated 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 paying him a compliment,”
Soyinka commented. “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 newest 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 added: “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 emphasized. “When we see people being arrested publicly – people being taken away and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”
The recent immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of targeted actions, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.