Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Longtime Trump Critic, Announces American Visa Revocation
The US government has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been outspoken about Trump since his earlier presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.
“I want to inform the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a media gathering.
Soyinka once had permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.
Soyinka speculated that his recent statements comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction and played a role in the US consulate’s decision.
Soyinka mentioned earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had summoned him for an interview to reevaluate his visa, which he said he would not attend.
According to a letter from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, referencing 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 remarked 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 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 hallmark of its wider clampdown on immigration, notably targeting university students who were vocal 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 paying him a compliment,”
Soyinka commented. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”
The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has lectured at and been awarded honours top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.
His most recent novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a commentary 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 denounce the escalated arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“This is not about me,” Soyinka declared. “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 worries me.”
The current immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of aggressive raids, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.
