Nigerian Nobel prize-winning author,
Prof. Wole Soyinka, said yesterday that he had fulfilled his pledge to
throw away his U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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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