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The US authorities has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been vocal about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka announced 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, addressed 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 suggested that his recent remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense and contributed to the US consulate’s decision.

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

According to a document from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have terminated 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 rather curious love letter from an embassy,”

he humorously 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, indicated it could not comment on individual cases, referencing confidentiality rules.

The present US administration has made visa revocations a signature of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably focusing on university students who were expressive 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 paying him a compliment,”

Soyinka commented. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has lectured at and been given awards top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.

His newest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a satire 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 remained 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 arrested publicly – people being taken away and they vanish for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what worries me.”

The ongoing immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of intensive operations, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.