Nobel prize-winning author, Prof. Wole
Soyinka, said on Thursday he had fulfilled his pledge to throw away his
US residency green card and leave the country if Donald Trump won the
presidential election.
Shortly before the vote, Soyinka had
vowed to give up his permanent US residency over a Trump victory to
protest against the Republican billionaire’s campaign promises to get
tough on immigration.
AFP reported that Soyinka said this on the sidelines of an education conference at the University of Johannesburg.
“I have already done it, I have disengaged (from the United States). I have done wha 82-yeasaidHe added, “I had a horror of what is to
come with Trump… I threw away the (green) card, and I have relocated,
and I’m back to where I have always been” – meaning his homeland
Nigeria.
The prolific playwright, novelist and
poet won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986 and has been a regular
teacher at US universities including Harvard, Cornell and Yale.
At the same time, he said he would not discourage others from applying for a green card.
“It’s useful in many ways. I wouldn’t
for one single moment discourage any Nigerian or anybody from acquiring a
green card… but I have had enough of it,” he said.
Soyinka, one of Africa’s most famous writers and rights activists, was jailed in 1967 for 22 months during Nigeria’s Civil War.
He was reported to have recently
completed a term as scholar-in-residence at New York University’s
Institute of African American Affairs.
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