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The US government has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been outspoken about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.

“I want to inform the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who was awarded the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, addressed a news conference.

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

Soyinka speculated that his recent remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction and played a role in the US consulate’s decision.

Soyinka noted earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had called him in for an interview to reassess his visa, which he declared he would not attend.

According to a communication from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, referencing American government regulations that authorize “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 stated while reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. 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 declared.

The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, stated it could not comment on individual cases, citing confidentiality rules.

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

Soyinka mentioned he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he stated 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 giving him praise,”

Soyinka explained. “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 given awards top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.

His newest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a commentary about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021. Soyinka described 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 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 criticise the escalated arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“This is not about me,” Soyinka said. “When we see people being arrested publicly – people being taken away and they are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”

The current immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of intensive operations, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.