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

“I want to inform the consulate … that I’m very pleased with the revocation of my visa,” Soyinka, who received the 1986 Nobel prize for literature, addressed a news conference.

Soyinka previously held permanent residency in the United States, though he discarded 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 noted earlier this year that the US consulate in Lagos had summoned him for an interview to reevaluate his visa, which he said he would not attend.

According to a communication from the consulate directed at Soyinka, officials have terminated his visa, citing 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 lightheartedly commented while presenting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. He also told 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, citing confidentiality rules.

The present US administration has made visa revocations a signature of its wider clampdown on immigration, notably focusing on university students who were outspoken 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 worldwide recognition, a statesman, so when I called Donald Trump Idi Amin, I thought I was showing him respect,”

Soyinka said. “He’s been conducting himself as a dictator.”

The 91-year-old playwright behind Death and the King’s Horseman has taught 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 satire 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 entertaining an invitation to the United States should circumstances change, but stated: “I wouldn’t take the initiative myself because there’s nothing I’m looking for there. Nothing.”

He went on to denounce the ramped-up arrests of undocumented immigrants in the country.

“This is not about me,” Soyinka declared. “When we see people being detained arbitrarily – people being apprehended and they are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what troubles me.”

The recent immigration crackdown has seen military personnel deployed to US cities and citizens short-term arrested as part of intensive operations, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.