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 said 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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