Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Trump Critic, Reports US Visa Cancellation
The American government has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been vocal about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.
“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very satisfied with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a news conference.
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 speculated that his recent comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense and led 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 letter from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, referencing American government regulations that authorize “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 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, stated it could not comment on individual cases, referencing confidentiality rules.
The current US administration has made visa revocations a signature of its wider crackdown 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 showing him respect,”
Soyinka said. “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 accepting 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 increased arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“This is not about me,” Soyinka declared. “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 worries me.”
The recent immigration crackdown has seen security forces deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of aggressive raids, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.
