Wole Soyinka, Outspoken Trump Critic, Reports American Visa Revocation
The US administration has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been outspoken about Trump since his earlier presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.
“I want to tell the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the termination of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, addressed a news conference.
Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he discarded his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.
Soyinka speculated that his recent comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense and contributed 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 stated he would not attend.
According to a communication from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have terminated his visa, invoking US state department 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 commented 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, citing confidentiality rules.
The present 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 remarked 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 paying him a compliment,”
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 latest 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 accepting 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 increased arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.
“This is not about me,” Soyinka emphasized. “When we see people being arrested publicly – people being apprehended and they are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what worries me.”
The ongoing immigration crackdown has seen security forces deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of aggressive raids, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.
