Nobel Prize-winning Nigerian author Prof. Wole Soyinka is back in the spotlight, nearly a decade after he tore up his US green card to protest Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory.
Now, it seems the United States has officially closed the door on him.
Back in 2016, before Trump was elected, Soyinka made a bold promise during a talk at Oxford University’s Ertegun House.
He said if Trump won, he would destroy his green card and cut ties with America.
“The moment they announce his victory, I will cut my green card myself and start packing up,” he declared.
And he wasn’t bluffing. Shortly after Trump’s win, Soyinka confirmed at a conference in South Africa that he’d gone through with it.
“I have already done it; I have disengaged from the United States. I had a horror of what was to come with Trump.
I threw away the green card, and I’m back to where I have always been,” he said.
The literary icon called it a moral stand against what he viewed as Trump’s divisive and xenophobic politics, not just an emotional reaction.
According to recent reports, the US government has now revoked Soyinka’s non-immigrant visa.
In a letter dated October 23, 2025, from the American Consulate-General in Lagos, the 90-year-old playwright was asked to submit his passport so his visa could be officially cancelled.
The letter mentioned that “additional information” had come to light after the visa was issued.
Soyinka revealed he had applied for the visa because he needed to travel to the US for a tax audit with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
He wanted to clear things up in person and avoid being labeled a “tax dodger.”
Soyinka first got his green card in the 1990s while on sabbatical at Emory University, with help from former US President Jimmy Carter.
Now, with his visa revoked, it looks like his decades-long connection with the United States has officially ended, what some are now calling “Wolexit.”
