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The United States administration has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been outspoken about Trump since his earlier presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.

“I want to inform the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, informed a press briefing.

Soyinka formerly possessed permanent residency in the United States, though he discarded his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

Soyinka suggested that his recent statements comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction 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 addressed to Soyinka, officials have terminated his visa, referencing United States 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 financial capital. 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 affirmed.

The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, said it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.

The current US administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably affecting university students who were vocal 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 giving him praise,”

Soyinka explained. “He’s been acting like a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has taught at and been given awards top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.

His newest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a satire about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021. Soyinka referred to 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 entertaining 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 condemn the ramped-up 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 concerns me.”

The recent 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.