The United States consulate in Lagos has revoked the visa of Nigerian writer Wole Soyinka, the Nobel laureate said Tuesday.
“I want to assure the consulate… that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, a famed playwright and author who won the 1986 Nobel Prize for Literature, told a news conference.
Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.
He has remained critical of the US president, who is now serving his second term, and speculated that his recent comments comparing Trump to former Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve.
Soyinka said earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had called him in for an interview to re-assess his visa.
According to a letter from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, seen by AFP, officials cited US State Department 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”.
Reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic capital, Soyinka said that officials asked him to bring his passport to the consulate so that his visa could be cancelled in-person.
He jokingly called it a “rather curious love letter from an embassy”, while telling any organisations hoping to invite him to the United States “not to waste their time”.
“I have no visa. I am banned,” Soyinka said.
– ‘Like a dictator’ –
The Trump administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably targeting university students who were outspoken about Palestinian rights.
The US embassy in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, did not respond to a request for comment.
“Idi Amin was a man of international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,” Soyinka said.
“He’s been behaving like a dictator, he should be proud.”
The 91-year-old playwright behind “Death and the King’s Horseman” has taught at and been awarded honours from top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.
Soyinka spoke at Harvard in 2022 alongside American literary critic Henry Louis Gates.
His latest novel, “Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth”, a satire about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021.
Asked if he would consider going back to the United States, Soyinka said: “How old am I?”
He however left the door open to accepting an invitation should circumstances change, but added: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”
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