Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Outspoken Trump Critic, Reports American Visa Revocation
The American authorities has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been critical about Trump since his earlier presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.
“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very satisfied with the termination of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, informed a media gathering.
Soyinka formerly possessed 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 remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction and played a role in the US consulate’s decision.
Soyinka said earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had called him in for an interview to review his visa, which he stated he would not attend.
According to a letter from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, referencing American government 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 rather curious love letter from an embassy,”
he humorously commented while presenting 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 affirmed.
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 signature of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably affecting university students who were expressive about Palestinian rights.
Soyinka mentioned 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 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 taught 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 referred to the book as his “gift to Nigeria”.
In February, the Crucible theatre in Sheffield staged Death and the King’s Horseman.
Soyinka remained open to entertaining 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 increased arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“This is not about me,” Soyinka emphasized. “When we see people being arrested publicly – people being apprehended and they vanish for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”
The current immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of targeted actions, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.
