US revokes visa for Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka after criticism of Trump
Soyinka, who previously held US permanent residency but destroyed his green card following Donald Trump's election in 2016, suggested the decision may have been linked to his recent remarks comparing Trump to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.
Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has had his US visa revoked, a move the 91-year-old playwright greeted with wry humour during a press conference in Lagos on Tuesday.
"I want to assure the consulate that I'm very content with the revocation of my visa," Soyinka said, reading aloud what he described as a "curious love letter from the embassy."
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The letter, from the US Consulate in Lagos, informed him that his visa had been cancelled under a State Department regulation allowing revocation "at any time, at the discretion" of consular officials.
Soyinka, who previously held US permanent residency but destroyed his green card following Donald Trump's election in 2016, suggested the decision may have been linked to his recent remarks comparing Trump to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.
"Idi Amin was a man of international stature," Soyinka quipped. "When I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment."
The US Embassy in Abuja declined to comment, citing confidentiality rules.
The playwright, author of Death and the King's Horseman, has long maintained strong ties with American academia, having taught at Harvard, Cornell, and other universities, but said he had no reason to appeal the decision.
"I wouldn't take the initiative myself because there's nothing I'm looking for there. Nothing," he told journalists.
Soyinka also used the moment to criticise what he called Trump's "crackdown on immigrants," referring to the arrest and separation of undocumented families.
"This is not about me," he said. "It's about a nation where old women and children are being picked off the streets."
The Trump administration's immigration policies. marked by visa revocations, student deportations, and heightened border enforcement, have drawn international criticism.
For Soyinka, the episode serves as both political theatre and poetic irony.
"I have no visa. I am banned," he concluded.
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