Nobel prize-winning
author Wole Soyinka said today, Thursday 1/12/2016 he has fulfilled his pledge
to throw away his US residency green card and leave the country if Donald Trump
won the presidential election.
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| Prof. Wole Soyinka |
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.
Source: AFP
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