Wole Soyinka, Longtime Trump Critic, Reports US Visa Cancellation
The American authorities has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been outspoken about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.
“I want to inform the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the termination of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, informed a press briefing.
Soyinka previously held 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 remarks 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 summoned him for an interview to reassess his visa, which he declared he would not attend.
According to a communication from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, citing American government 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 rather curious love letter from an embassy,”
he humorously commented while presenting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. 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 declared.
The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, said it could not comment on individual cases, referencing confidentiality rules.
The present US administration has made visa revocations a defining feature of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably affecting 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 international stature, 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 lectured at and been given awards top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.
His newest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a commentary about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021. Soyinka called 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 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 criticise the increased arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“This is not about me,” Soyinka emphasized. “When we see people being detained arbitrarily – people being taken away and they vanish for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”
The ongoing immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of intensive operations, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.
