Soyinka’s visa revoked after Trump criticisms

Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has said the US revoked his visa and banned him from the country, reports BBC News. The 91-year-old author, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986, said the US Consulate asked him to bring in his passport so his visa could be cancelled in person as new unspecified information had come to light. Soyinka called the invitation a ‘rather curious love letter from an embassy’ in a news conference on Tuesday and told organisations hoping to invite him to the US ‘not to waste their time’. The US Embassy in Nigeria has said it cannot comment on individual cases. The Nobel laureate has previously held permanent residency in the US but renounced it in 2016, tearing up his green card (permanent residence permit) in protest of President Donald Trump's election. The famed author has had regular teaching engagements at US universities for the past 30 years. ‘I have no visa. I am banned,’ he said on Tuesday. Soyinka has long been critical of the Trump administration's radical stance on immigration and linked the visa revocation to his outspoken criticism. He said his recent comparison of Trump to Uganda's dictator – ‘Idi Amin in white face’ – may have contributed to the current situation. ‘When I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,’ Soyinka said, ‘he's been behaving like a dictator.’

Full BBC News report