Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has revealed that the US government has revoked his visa, a move he says followed his public criticism of former president Donald Trump.
At a news conference in Lagos, Soyinka — who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature — said he was “very content with the revocation of my visa” and read aloud a letter from the US consulate telling him the visa had been cancelled. He joked the letter was a “rather curious love letter from an embassy” and warned organisations not to waste time inviting him to the United States.
Soyinka, 91, said he previously held permanent residency in the US but destroyed his green card after Trump’s 2016 election. He suggested his recent comparison of Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin may have prompted the consulate’s action, adding that he meant it as a kind of backhanded compliment because Amin had been a figure of “international stature”.
He also said the US consulate in Lagos had called him in for an interview to reassess his visa earlier this year, an appointment he declined to attend. A copy of the consulate’s letter seen by Agence France-Presse cited State Department regulations that allow a consular officer or other authorized official to revoke a nonimmigrant visa “at any time” in their discretion.
Soyinka told journalists, “I have no visa. I am banned.” The US embassy in Abuja said it could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules.
Observers note that the Trump administration has used visa revocations as part of a wider immigration crackdown, including measures that affected outspoken university students. Soyinka criticized recent aggressive arrests of undocumented migrants, expressing concern about people being detained, held for long periods and families being separated.
The playwright, author of Death and the King’s Horseman, has taught at and received honours from leading US universities including Harvard and Cornell. His most recent novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a satire on corruption in Nigeria published in 2021, was described by Soyinka as his “gift to Nigeria.” In February, the Crucible theatre in Sheffield staged Death and the King’s Horseman.
While Soyinka left open the possibility of accepting a future invitation to the US if circumstances changed, he said he would not take the initiative himself because there was “nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.” He emphasized that his concern over the visa revocation is secondary to his worry about the human cost of heightened immigration enforcement.
