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

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

Soyinka formerly possessed permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

Soyinka surmised that his recent comments comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense 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 review his visa, which he said he would not attend.

According to a document from the consulate addressed to Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, invoking United States 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 jokingly commented while reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. He also informed any organizations hoping to invite him to the United States “not to waste their time”.

“I have no visa. I am banned,” Soyinka affirmed.

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

The present US administration has made visa revocations a defining feature of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably focusing on university students who were expressive about Palestinian rights.

Soyinka revealed he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he remarked 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 commented. “He’s been conducting himself as 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 newest novel, Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth, a critique 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 remained open to accepting an invitation to the United States should circumstances change, but added: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”

He went on to condemn the increased 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 taken away and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what worries me.”

The recent immigration crackdown has seen national guard troops deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of targeted actions, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.