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The United States authorities has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been outspoken about Trump since his earlier presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.

“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very content with the termination of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, told a media gathering.

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 comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense and led 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 review his visa, which he declared he would not attend.

According to a communication from the consulate sent to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, referencing US state department 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 somewhat unusual love letter from an embassy,”

he lightheartedly commented while reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre. 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, said it could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules.

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

Soyinka revealed he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he remarked 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 said. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has taught at and been given awards 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 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 stated: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”

He went on to denounce the ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“This is not about me,” Soyinka emphasized. “When we see people being detained arbitrarily – people being apprehended and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”

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