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The US administration has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been outspoken about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.

“I want to tell the consulate … that I’m very content with the termination of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, addressed a news conference.

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 surmised that his recent remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense and contributed to the US consulate’s decision.

Soyinka noted earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had summoned him for an interview to review his visa, which he declared he would not attend.

According to a letter from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, invoking American government 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 quite peculiar love letter from an embassy,”

he lightheartedly remarked while reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre. 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, stated it could not comment on individual cases, referencing confidentiality rules.

The current US administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably affecting university students who were expressive about Palestinian rights.

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

“Idi Amin was a man of international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was showing him respect,”

Soyinka explained. “He’s been behaving 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 latest 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 left the door open to accepting an invitation to the United States should circumstances change, but added: “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 declared. “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 concerns me.”

The recent immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of targeted actions, as well as the limiting of legal means of entry.