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The American government has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been vocal about Trump since his earlier presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.

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

Soyinka once had 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 statements comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense and played a role in the US consulate’s decision.

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

According to a communication from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have cancelled his visa, referencing American government 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 quite peculiar love letter from an embassy,”

he lightheartedly commented while reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial hub. 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 said.

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

The existing US administration has made visa revocations a defining feature of its wider clampdown 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 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 giving him praise,”

Soyinka commented. “He’s been conducting himself as 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 described 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 considering 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 ramped-up 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 apprehended and they disappear for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles 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.