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The United States government has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning playwright who has been outspoken about Trump since his earlier presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.

“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very content with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, informed a media gathering.

Soyinka formerly possessed 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 statements comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction 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 reevaluate his visa, which he declared he would not attend.

According to a document from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, referencing United States regulations that allow “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 jokingly stated while reading 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 said.

The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, indicated it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.

The existing US administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably affecting university students who were vocal 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 international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was showing him respect,”

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

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has worked for and been awarded honours top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.

His latest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a commentary 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 did not rule out to accepting 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 declared. “When we see people being picked off the street – people being hauled up and they vanish for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”

The ongoing immigration crackdown has seen security forces deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of targeted actions, as well as the limiting of legal means of entry.