Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Trump Critic, Reports American Visa Revocation
The United States administration has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been critical about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.
“I want to inform the consulate … that I’m very satisfied with the cancellation 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 tore up 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 provoked a reaction 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 declared he would not attend.
According to a communication from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, citing United States 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 jokingly stated while reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre. He also informed 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, pointing to confidentiality rules.
The current US administration has made visa revocations a signature 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 said 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 showing him respect,”
Soyinka explained. “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 recognized by top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.
His most recent 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 did not rule out 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 criticise the ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“This is not about me,” Soyinka said. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being taken away and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”
The recent immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of targeted actions, as well as the limiting of legal means of entry.
