Nigerian Nobel-literature laureate Wole Soyinka has confirmed that he has relocated to his native Nigeria.
Soyinka vowed a month ago while giving a speech to students at the Oxford University in the United Kingdom that he would “cut up” his green card if Trump won the elections.
“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. It’s useful in many ways,” Soyinka, who was scholar-in-residence at New York University’s Institute of African American Affairs this autumn, told AFP
“I wouldn’t for one single moment discourage any Nigerians or anybody from acquiring a green card… but I have had enough of it.” Soyinka was quoted as saying.
The Nigerian playwright and poet who, was imprisoned in Nigeria during its civil war, later fleeing the country and receiving a death sentence in absentia, urged young people to stand up against oppression.
Akinwande Oluwole “Wole” Babatunde Soyinka, 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.
Soyinka is one of Africa’s most famous writers and rights activists.