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

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

Soyinka previously held 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 struck a nerve and played a role in the US consulate’s decision.

Soyinka noted earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had summoned him for an interview to review 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 American government 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 humorously stated while presenting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. He also advised 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, pointing to 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 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 explained. “He’s been conducting himself as 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 newest 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 remained open to entertaining an invitation to the United States should circumstances change, but continued: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”

He went on to condemn the escalated arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“This is not about me,” Soyinka said. “When we see people being arrested publicly – people being hauled up and they vanish for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”

The recent immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of aggressive raids, as well as the limiting of legal means of entry.