Nigerian Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has revealed that the Trump administration had revoked his US visa, effectively banning him from the country.
The author said that the US consulate had asked him to bring in his passport so his visa could be cancelled in person, after saying unspecified information had come to light. Soyinka linked the ban to his vocal criticism of the Trump administration, which included him destroying his green card in 2017 in protest of Donald Trump’s first-term inauguration.
Soyinka was the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, with his plays including The Swamp Dwellers and The Lion and the Jewel, as well as three novels and several essay and poetry collections.
He also has a long history of protest: He was repeatedly held in solitary confinement in a jail in Nigeria in the 1960s for his criticism of the military government at the time.