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The US authorities has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright 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 revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a media gathering.

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 speculated that his recent statements comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense and led to the US consulate’s decision.

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

According to a letter from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, citing 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 jokingly remarked while presenting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre. He also told 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, said it could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules.

The current US administration has made visa revocations a defining feature of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably focusing on university students who were vocal about Palestinian rights.

Soyinka mentioned he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he remarked 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 acting 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 latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a commentary about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021. Soyinka described 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 continued: “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 emphasized. “When we see people being arrested publicly – people being taken away and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”

The current immigration crackdown has seen security forces deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of aggressive raids, as well as the limiting of legal means of entry.