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The US government has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the renowned Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author who has been vocal about Trump since his first presidency, Soyinka announced on Tuesday.

“I want to assure the consulate … that I’m very content with the cancellation of my visa,” Soyinka, who won 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 suggested that his recent remarks 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 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, citing US state department regulations that permit “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 reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s financial capital. 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, stated it could not comment on individual cases, pointing to confidentiality rules.

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

Soyinka revealed he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he stated 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 paying him a compliment,”

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 given awards top US universities including Harvard and Cornell.

His latest 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 left the door open 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 are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what worries me.”

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