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The American authorities has terminated the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been vocal about Trump since his initial 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 news conference.

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

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

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

According to a document from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, invoking US state department 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 rather curious love letter from an embassy,”

he humorously remarked while reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. 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, referencing confidentiality rules.

The current US administration has made visa revocations a hallmark of its wider restrictions on immigration, notably targeting university students who were expressive about Palestinian rights.

Soyinka mentioned he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he said Trump “should be proud of”.

“Idi Amin was a man of global standing, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment,”

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

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has lectured at 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 commentary about corruption in Nigeria, was published in 2021. Soyinka called 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 added: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”

He went on to criticise the increased arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“This is not about me,” Soyinka said. “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 troubles me.”

The ongoing immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of aggressive raids, as well as the limiting of legal means of entry.