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The US administration has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been vocal about Trump since his earlier presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.

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

Soyinka once had permanent residency in the United States, though he discarded his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

Soyinka suggested that his recent comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction and played a role in 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 stated he would not attend.

According to a document from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, citing 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 somewhat unusual love letter from an embassy,”

he humorously 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, stated it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.

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

Soyinka revealed he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he said Trump “should be proud of”.

“Idi Amin was a man of worldwide recognition, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,”

Soyinka commented. “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 recognized by 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 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 escalated 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 hauled up and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what worries me.”

The current immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of aggressive raids, as well as the curtailing of legal means of entry.