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The American authorities has revoked the visa for Wole Soyinka, the celebrated Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been vocal about Trump since his earlier 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, told a news conference.

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

Soyinka surmised that his recent statements comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have provoked a reaction and contributed to the US consulate’s decision.

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

According to a document from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have revoked his visa, referencing 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 somewhat unusual love letter from an embassy,”

he jokingly remarked while reading the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre. 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 declared.

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

The current US administration has made visa revocations a defining feature of its wider crackdown on immigration, notably affecting university students who were vocal about Palestinian rights.

Soyinka said 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 behaving like a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has lectured at and been recognized by 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 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 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 increased arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

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

The current immigration crackdown has seen security forces deployed to US cities and citizens briefly held as part of targeted actions, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.