United States 'Cancels' Wole Soyinka, Whose Satire on 'Happiness' Once Unsettled Nigeria

Wole Soyinka, venerated Nobel Literature laureate – Africa's first to win the prize in 1986 – has said the United States' visa authorities in Lagos sent him a letter summoning him for they wished to revalidate his visa. He never went, initially believing it was a "scam".

"I've been banned from entering the United States," he told a press conference on October 27, also saying he had no idea why his visa was revoked.

"I have no visa; I have been banned, obviously, from the United States," he told a press conference, smiling as he spoke to the serious faces before him. He called the letter from the visa office a "rather curious love letter from an embassy".

According to the BBC, "The US embassy in Nigeria has said it cannot comment on individual cases."

While the reasons for the visa revocation are unknown, according to Soyinka and news reports on the sudden development, it is part of the United States's turn towards what is broadly called political and cultural "intolerance". Though it is a charge the Donald Trump administration repels, Soyinka made no bones about it.

According to this news report, he believes his recent comparison of Trump with Idi Amin – a reviled Ugandan dictator, particularly notorious for propelling non-Ugandans to leave his country in the 1970s – was the reason.

Soyinka recently called Trump a "white version of Idi Amin", CNN has reported.

“Idi Amin was a man of international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,” Soyinka said, the Guardian reported. “He’s been behaving like a dictator.”

The Trump administration has pursued a visible and "proactive" policy of deporting illegal residents over the last year. But some nationals have complained, according to numerous reports over the year – that have been especially targeted to leave – including Nigerian nationals.

In July, the United States government altered its policy for Nigerian nationals, limiting how long their visits could last (three months), how often they could return on the same visa (never) – and then tried unsuccessfully to convince the Nigerian government, as PBS then reported, to accept nationals from other countries the Trump administration expected to deport.

There's widespread concern that 91-year-old Soyinka, who is Nigerian, will not be able to return to the United States. But that is not how the author-professor seems to have responded to the "ban". At his press conference, he seemed to underplay the situation humorously, "It is necessary for me to give this press conference, because people [in the United States] who are hoping to invite me for this event, or that event, or were thinking of it, not to waste their time," he said.

"You want to see me, you know where to find me – it's as elementary as that," he said, clarifying that the concern wasn't just his, but that of "thousands of thousands of people", as the United States has been "digging" into the past [of visa holders], trying to find mistakes and misdemeanours to allow their visas to be revoked.

He then listed the "catalogue of his crimes [but] only one conviction". At an Indian restaurant in London, before he had to leave for Chicago, he put some "green chillies [peppers] in his pocket – just to keep me going in cold, wintry places".

"I forgot to declare those chillies... at the Chicago airport I am telling you now, that I forgot to report those chillies," he said, TVC News Nigeria reported. Instead of going to court, he pleaded guilty and paid a US $25 fine and then was let go – ending in his conviction.

He was visiting Chicago for rehearsals for his play, "Death and the King's Horseman", "the first major production".

He was obviously poking fun at the situation, and the heavy-handed approach adopted towards him and others denied entry or permission to visit the United States. In 2016, Soyinka reportedly tore up his green card, the permission for permanent residency in the United States, in protest of Trump winning the presidential election.

Soyinka has taught at numerous American universities, including some of the Ivy League ones.

Addressing the United Nations General Assembly in March, where Soyinka was a key note speaker on slavery (and reparation for slavery), he said that it was "impossible to quantify the appropriate reparation for such a global atrocity." He said:

"We can only tackle it [reparation for slavery] symbolically, gesturally, but propulsively also, so that it gives further meaning to the ambition of humanity to recover itself. So let us give up on the idea of material reparations ... the nature of reparatory justice that befits the magnitude of slavery's wrongs can only be symbolic."

The Trump administration and the president himself have been accused of espousing and expressing racist beliefs, ideas and actions – another charge he has repeatedly denied, the BBC has reported.

“I will continue to welcome any American to my home if they have anything legitimate to do with me,” Soyinka told Agence de Presse Africaine.

He was in Atlanta, he recalled, for a conference organised by the American Society for African Culture (AMSAC), "probably sometime in the seventies – I am not good with dates."

Anyhow, the conference was at least thirty years ago, when some "racist conduct" by a Atlanta motel receptionist led to a confrontation, which led to the police being called, which only seems to have worsened the situation. "So I can be 'convicted', if you like, for disobeying orders from law officers of the United States..."

Both criticised and lauded for his uncompromising moral positions, Soyinka once described his critically acclaimed book – Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth (2021) – as his "gift" to Nigeria. The book satirises many aspects of life in his country.

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