Nigerian Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka, Longtime Trump Critic, Reports US Visa Termination
The American government has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been outspoken about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.
“I want to tell the consulate … that I’m very satisfied with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, addressed a press briefing.
Soyinka formerly possessed permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.
Soyinka surmised 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 review his visa, which he said he would not attend.
According to a letter from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have terminated his visa, referencing 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 somewhat unusual love letter from an embassy,”
he lightheartedly stated while reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre. 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 said.
The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, said it could not comment on individual cases, referencing confidentiality rules.
The existing US administration has made visa revocations a signature of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably focusing on university students who were outspoken about Palestinian rights.
Soyinka mentioned he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he stated 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 giving him praise,”
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 awarded honours top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.
His most recent novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a critique 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 considering 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 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 concerns me.”
The current immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of intensive operations, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.
