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The American authorities has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been vocal about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.

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

Soyinka previously held 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 statements 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 called him in for an interview to reassess his visa, which he said he would not attend.

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

he jokingly stated 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 declared.

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

The present US administration has made visa revocations a defining feature of its wider crackdown 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 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 acting like a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has taught at 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 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 left the door open to accepting 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 criticise the ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

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

The recent immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of intensive operations, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.