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The United States authorities has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been outspoken about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka stated on Tuesday.

“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, addressed 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 suggested that his recent remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and led to the US consulate’s decision.

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

According to a letter from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, referencing United States 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 quite peculiar love letter from an embassy,”

he humorously remarked while reading 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 affirmed.

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

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

Soyinka said he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he stated 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 giving him praise,”

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

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

His most recent novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a critique 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 entertaining 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 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 vanish for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”

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