Wole Soyinka visa revoked after likening Trump to Idi Amin. The Nobel laureate calls it a compliment in a defiant interview.
In a bold display of defiance and wry humor, Nigerian Nobel Prize-winning author Wole Soyinka has suggested that his recent US visa revocation stems from a scathing comparison of President Donald Trump to one of history’s most notorious dictators: Uganda’s Idi Amin.
The 91-year-old literary giant, speaking in a recent interview on the US-based Democracy Now!, quipped that Trump “should be flattered” by the analogy, given the president’s own professed affinity for conflict.
The controversy erupted last week when Soyinka, the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986, announced at a press conference in Lagos that his non-immigrant visa, issued just last year, had been abruptly canceled by the US State Department.
The official letter cited vague “additional information” that emerged post-issuance, but provided no specifics.
Soyinka, a longtime critic of Trump’s immigration policies and authoritarian tendencies, wasted no time linking the decision to his outspoken rhetoric.
“I remembered that I referred to him as the white version of Idi Amin,” Soyinka told Democracy Now! host, Amy Goodman, on November 3, referencing a recent remark where he dubbed Trump “Idi Amin in white face.”
“Oh, I think Trump should be flattered by the fact that I compared him to Idi Amin. I mean, Trump has said he likes war. I’m quoting him. Idi Amin was a man of war and brutality. Idi Amin considered himself a liberator.”
Soyinka’s comparison draws a provocative parallel to Idi Amin Dada, the Ugandan military officer who seized power in 1971 and ruled with an iron fist until 1979.
Amin’s regime, marked by widespread human rights abuses, ethnic purges, and an estimated 100,000 to 500,000 deaths, earned him the moniker “Butcher of Uganda.”
In earlier statements to outlets like The Guardian and Newsweek, Soyinka doubled down on the irony: “Idi Amin was a man of international stature, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was paying him a compliment.”
He added that the US president “has been behaving like a dictator,” tying the jab to Trump’s hardline stance on immigration and visa revocations; a policy that has targeted critics, including pro-Palestinian activists on university campuses.
This isn’t Soyinka’s first clash with Trump.
In 2016, shortly after the real estate mogul’s election victory, the playwright dramatically tore up his US green card in protest, vowing to leave the country if Trump won.
Now, nearly a decade later, the visa ban; which effectively bars him from US soil, feels like poetic payback.
“I want to assure the consulate… that I’m very content with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka remarked dryly at his Lagos press conference, as reported by Al Jazeera and CNN.
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He joked about his age (“How old am I?”) when asked if he’d consider returning and even mused about penning a play on Trump: “Maybe it’s about time also to write a play about Donald Trump.”
Soyinka, whose works like The Man Died chronicle his own imprisonment under Nigeria’s military regimes, remains undeterred.
He told BBC News he’s open to a US invitation but won’t pursue one himself: “There’s nothing I’m looking for there.”
As Trump threatens military action against Nigeria over unsubstantiated claims of “Christian genocide,” Soyinka warned in the same interview that such rhetoric only “expands the force of hostility,” complicating resolutions to the country’s religious tensions.
Source: Read more at saharareporters.com
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
