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The United States administration has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been vocal about Trump since his earlier presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.

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

Soyinka once had 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 comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction and contributed 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 review his visa, which he stated he would not attend.

According to a document from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, referencing US state department regulations that authorize “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 commented while reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. 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 declared.

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

The existing US administration has made visa revocations a defining feature of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably affecting university students who were expressive about Palestinian rights.

Soyinka revealed 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 showing him respect,”

Soyinka explained. “He’s been conducting himself as 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 most recent novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a commentary 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 left the door open to considering 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 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 are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”

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