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The US authorities has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been vocal about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.

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

Soyinka once had permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

Soyinka surmised that his recent comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and played a role in the US consulate’s decision.

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

According to a document from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, invoking United States 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 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 advised any organizations hoping to invite him to the United States “not to waste their time”.

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

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

The current US administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably focusing on university students who were outspoken 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 worked for and been awarded honours 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 considering an invitation to the United States should circumstances change, but stated: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”

He went on to denounce the increased arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“This is not about me,” Soyinka declared. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being hauled up and they are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”

The current immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of aggressive raids, as well as the limiting of legal means of entry.