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The United States government has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been vocal about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.

“I want to inform the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a media gathering.

Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he discarded his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

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

According to a letter from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, referencing US state department 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 presenting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. 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, indicated it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.

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

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

“Idi Amin was a man of worldwide recognition, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,”

Soyinka said. “He’s been acting like a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has worked for and been recognized by top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.

His newest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a commentary 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 remained open to accepting 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 condemn the ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“This is not about me,” Soyinka said. “When we see people being arrested publicly – people being apprehended and they are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”

The ongoing 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.