Trump victory: I have torn my green card - Soyinka

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 . The 82-year-old said on the sidelines of an education conference at the University of Johannesburg.

“I have already done it, I have disengaged (from the United States). I have done what I said I would do,”
“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.AFP quotes him as saying

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.

AFP