Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author Wole Soyinka said Thursday he has 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.
“I have already done it, I have
disengaged (from the United States). I have done what I said I would do,” the
82-year-old told AFP on the sidelines of an education conference at the University
of Johannesburg.
“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 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.
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