Wole Soyinka Says The US Government Has Revoked His Visa

Nobel laureate Professor Wole Soyinka revealed on Tuesday, the 29th of October, 2025, that the US government has revoked his visa, effectively banning him from the country. Soyinka made this announcement , while addressing journalists at Kongi’s Harvest Gallery, Freedom Park, Lagos Island. 

“It is necessary for me to hold this conference so that people in the United States, who are expecting me for this event or that event, do not waste their time,” he said. 

In his telling, he was informed of the development by the U.S. Consulate through an official letter dated October 23, 2025. He noted that he is unaware of the reason for the decision. Soyinka also emphasized that he had never engaged in criminal activity of any sort or violated U.S. laws. 

“I’m still looking into my past history… I don’t have any criminal record or even a misdemeanour to qualify for the revocation,” he said. “I keep asking myself — have I ever misbehaved toward the United States of America? Have I gone against the law anywhere?” He said. 

According to the BBC, the US embassy in Nigeria has said it cannot comment on individual cases. Despite the paucity of information on the situation, many believe it to be retribution from the Trump administration. 

Critics have accused Trump of punishing individuals, institutions and companies who expressed dissent or failed to overtly bend the knee. 

“This White House’s public, multi-pronged frontal assault on national institutions is unprecedented,” said Timothy Naftali, the CNN presidential historian and senior research scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Soyinka, famously hawkish about social issues, has been a longtime critic of Donald Trump. The literary icon previously held permanent residency in the US but renounced it in 2016, tearing up his green card—a US permanent residency permit—in protest of President Donald Trump’s election.

Referencing this during his addresses yesterday at the Kongi Harvest Gallery, the Nobel laureate joked that his green card had “fallen between the fingers of a pair of scissors and it got cut into a couple of pieces.”

Soyinka has also been critical of the Trump administration’s immigration stance on immigration and has compared Trump to Idi Amin, the late Ugandan military officer and president, widely held as one of the most vicious dictators in the world. “When I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,” Soyinka said during his address yesterday. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”