Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has been banned from entering the United States after his visa was revoked. The 91-year-old author, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, received a letter from the US consulate in Lagos requesting he bring his passport for cancellation, citing “new information” that had come to light.
Soyinka expressed surprise and amusement at the development, calling the invitation a “rather curious love letter from an embassy”. He advised organizations planning to invite him to the US to “not waste their time” and jokingly noted that he no longer has his green card, which “fell between the fingers of a pair of scissors and got cut into a couple of pieces”.
Soyinka has been a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s immigration policies and believes the visa revocation is linked to his criticism, particularly his comparison of Trump to Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. The author has had regular teaching engagements at US universities for 30 years and previously held permanent residency in the US, which he renounced in 2016 in protest of Trump’s election.
The US embassy in Nigeria has declined to comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules. This incident is part of a broader shift in US immigration policy, with the Trump administration tightening visa regulations for several African countries, including Nigeria.