Nobel laureate, Prof Wole Soyinka has said the US revoked his visa and banned him from the country.
Recall that Soyinka had destroyed his green card as an act of protest before the January 20, 2017 inauguration ceremony of President Donald Trump who won the US election in November 2016.
Prior to the election, he had told a student audience at Oxford University’s Ertegun House that he would hold his own, self-described “Wolexit” if Trump won, and destroy his green card.
“If in the unlikely event he does win, the first thing he’ll do is to say all green-card holders must reapply to come back into the US. Well, I’m not waiting for that. The moment they announce his victory, I will cut my green card myself and start packing up,” he declared.
Speaking at Kongi’s Harvest Gallery in Lagos yesterday, the 1986 winner of Nobel Prize for Literature read from a message sent on October 23 from the US consulate in Lagos asking 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” and told organisations hoping to invite him to the US “not to waste their time”.
“We request you bring your visa to the US Consulate General Lagos for physical cancellation. To schedule an appointment, please email — et cetera, et cetera — in advance of the appointment,” Soyinka recited, skimming the letter.
He told the audience that he did not have time to fulfil the request.
“I like people who have a sense of humour, and this is one of the most humorous sentences or requests I’ve had in all my life.
“Would any of you like to volunteer in my place? Take the passport for me? I’m a little bit busy and rushed,” he added rather jokingly.
Soyinka affirmed that he no longer had his green card – and jokingly added that it had “fallen between the fingers of a pair of scissors and it got cut into a couple of pieces.”
“I have no visa. I am banned,” he said.
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.”
Idi Amin was a Ugandan military officer and dictator who ruled the country from 1971 to 1979, infamous for his brutal regime and widespread human rights abuses.
When asked if he would consider going back to the US, Soyinka said: “How old am I?”
