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

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

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

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

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

According to a letter from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, referencing 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 jokingly stated 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 said.

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 defining feature of its wider clampdown on immigration, notably targeting 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 international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was giving him praise,”

Soyinka commented. “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 satire 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 added: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”

He went on to condemn 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 hauled up and they are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what worries me.”

The recent immigration crackdown has seen security forces deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of aggressive raids, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.