Nigeria’s Nobel laureate Professor Wole Soyinka has confirmed the destruction of his US residency green card. The award-winning author said on Thursday, December 1 that he has fulfilled his earlier pledge to destroy his residency permit and abandon the United States if Donald Trump won the presidential election.
“I have already done it, I have disengaged (from the United States). I have done what I said I would do. “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,” BBC quoted Soyinka as saying at an education conference at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa.
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 Nigerians 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. A lawyer had also warned of the implications of such an action by Soyinka, saying that he could go to jail for destroying such an important document.
Abuja based lawyer Kayode Ajulo cautioned Prof. Wole Soyinka against carrying out his threat to destroy his American green card in protest of Donald Trump’s victory at the US presidential election.
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