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

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

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 remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and played a role in the US consulate’s decision.

Soyinka said earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had requested his presence for an interview to reassess his visa, which he stated he would not attend.

According to a letter from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have terminated his visa, citing US state department 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 rather curious love letter from an embassy,”

he humorously commented while reading 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 affirmed.

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

The existing US administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider clampdown on immigration, notably targeting university students who were expressive 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 global standing, 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 worked for and been awarded honours top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.

His most recent novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a satire about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021. Soyinka called 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 considering 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 increased 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 worries me.”

The recent immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of intensive operations, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.