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The US government has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been outspoken about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.

“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, informed a media gathering.

Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he tore up 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 caused offense and led to the US consulate’s decision.

Soyinka mentioned 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 document from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, referencing United States 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”.

“This is a somewhat unusual love letter from an embassy,”

he lightheartedly commented while reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre. He also informed any organizations hoping to invite him to the United States “not to waste their time”.

“I have no visa. I am banned,” Soyinka said.

The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, indicated it could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules.

The existing US administration has made visa revocations a signature of its wider clampdown on immigration, notably targeting university students who were outspoken about Palestinian rights.

Soyinka revealed he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he said Trump “should be proud of”.

“Idi Amin was a man of worldwide recognition, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,”

Soyinka commented. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has lectured 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 criticise the escalated 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 vanish for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what worries me.”

The recent immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of aggressive raids, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.