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The United States government has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been critical about Trump since his earlier presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.

“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the termination of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, informed a press briefing.

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

Soyinka surmised that his recent remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have struck a nerve and contributed to the US consulate’s decision.

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

According to a document from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, citing American government 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 rather curious love letter from an embassy,”

he lightheartedly stated while reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. 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 affirmed.

The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, stated it could not comment on individual cases, referencing confidentiality rules.

The current 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 said he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he remarked 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 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 given awards 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 called the book as his “gift to Nigeria”.

In February, the Crucible theatre in Sheffield staged Death and the King’s Horseman.

Soyinka did not rule out 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 ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“This is not about me,” Soyinka emphasized. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being taken away and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”

The current immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of aggressive raids, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.