Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Outspoken Trump Critic, Announces US Visa Termination
The United States administration has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been vocal about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.
“I want to assure 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 formerly possessed 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 remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction and led to the US consulate’s decision.
Soyinka noted earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had summoned him for an interview to review his visa, which he said he would not attend.
According to a letter from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, invoking 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 somewhat unusual love letter from an embassy,”
he lightheartedly stated while presenting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre. 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, said 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 international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was giving him praise,”
Soyinka said. “He’s been conducting himself as 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 referred to 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 considering 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 ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“This is not about me,” Soyinka emphasized. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being taken away and they are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”
The ongoing immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of targeted actions, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.
