Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Outspoken Trump Critic, Reveals American Visa Cancellation
The US authorities 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 inform the consulate … that I’m very satisfied with the termination of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, informed a news conference.
Soyinka formerly possessed 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 remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense and led to the US consulate’s decision.
Soyinka mentioned earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had summoned him for an interview to reassess his visa, which he declared he would not attend.
According to a letter from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, citing 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 somewhat unusual love letter from an embassy,”
he lightheartedly commented while reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. 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, indicated it could not comment on individual cases, referencing confidentiality rules.
The current US administration has made visa revocations a defining feature of its wider clampdown on immigration, notably focusing on university students who were outspoken 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 global standing, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was showing him respect,”
Soyinka said. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”
The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has lectured at and been recognized by 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 described the book as his “gift to Nigeria”.
In February, the Crucible theatre in Sheffield staged Death and the King’s Horseman.
Soyinka did not rule out 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 ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“This is not about me,” Soyinka declared. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being hauled up and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”
The ongoing immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of intensive operations, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.
