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The US government has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been vocal about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.

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

Soyinka formerly possessed permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

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

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

According to a communication from the consulate addressed to 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 quite peculiar love letter from an embassy,”

he humorously remarked 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 said.

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

The existing US administration has made visa revocations a signature of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably focusing on university students who were vocal about Palestinian rights.

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

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 latest 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 did not rule out 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 criticise the increased arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“This is not about me,” Soyinka declared. “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 ongoing immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of intensive operations, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.