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The United States government has cancelled the visa for Wole Soyinka, the acclaimed Nigerian Nobel prize-winning writer who has been outspoken about Trump since his initial presidency, Soyinka disclosed on Tuesday.

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

Soyinka formerly possessed permanent residency in the United States, though he destroyed his green card after Donald Trump’s first election in 2016.

Soyinka speculated that his recent remarks comparing Trump to the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin might have caused offense and contributed to the US consulate’s decision.

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

According to a document 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 jokingly commented while reciting the letter aloud to journalists in Lagos, Nigeria’s economic centre. 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 declared.

The US embassy in Abuja, the capital, said it could not comment on individual cases, citing 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 said he had recently compared Trump to Uganda’s Amin, something he stated 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 paying him a compliment,”

Soyinka explained. “He’s been acting like 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 latest 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 left the door open to entertaining 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 denounce the escalated 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 are held for a month … old women, children being separated. So that’s really what concerns me.”

The recent immigration crackdown has seen security forces deployed to US cities and citizens temporarily detained as part of intensive operations, as well as the restricting of legal means of entry.