Wole Soyinka, Outspoken Trump Critic, Reports US Visa Revocation
The American authorities has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been critical 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 received 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 suggested that his recent comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and led to the US consulate’s decision.
Soyinka said earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had requested his presence for an interview to reevaluate his visa, which he stated he would not attend.
According to a letter from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have terminated 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 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 declared.
The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, indicated it could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules.
The existing US administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider crackdown 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 remarked 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 giving him praise,”
Soyinka said. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”
The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has worked for and been recognized by top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.
His newest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a satire 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 remained open to accepting an invitation to the United States should circumstances change, but continued: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”
He went on to condemn the increased arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“This is not about me,” Soyinka declared. “When we see people being detained arbitrarily – people being hauled up and they vanish 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 temporarily detained as part of targeted actions, as well as the limiting of legal means of entry.
