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Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, has described US President Donald Trump as a “petty-minded dictator”.
In an interview with the BBC, Soyinka said he predicted early on that Trump’s tenure would target minorities and undermine immigrants.
He recalled telling friends: “When that man comes to power, the first thing he will do is cancel even the green cards.”
Soyinka pointed to what he described as increased extrajudicial killings of Black people and minorities in the US, linking them to Trump’s “hate rhetoric”.
“This is a petty-minded dictator; you see how he deals with his objects of hate… There were more killings — extrajudicial killings — by the police of black people, of minorities, during the campaign, and on account of hate rhetoric, the hate rhetoric of this individual.”
Soyinka said shortly after Trump was relected in November 2024, he received a letter from the US internal revenue service (IRS) notifying him of an upcoming audit of his tax returns spanning the previous five years.
“After he took office, I got a letter from the IRS telling me to report for an audit. The coincidence for me was very impressive.”
“Unfortunately, or fortunately, whichever way you want to look at it, not long after that, maybe by accident or maybe it’s related or not, I got a letter from the Internal Revenue Service of the United States of America saying that an audit of my tax return was about to take place, going back about five years.
“So I went to the embassy to say this is the letter I just received from the Internal Revenue Service. My Green Card is no longer usable. I don’t want to be advertised as a tax dodger owing the United States money and being chased all over the world with letters and police, and I said I needed to go in and see the audit, and that’s exactly what happened.”
Soyinka added that not long after the audit letter came a visa-revocation by the US government — which he viewed as part of the same pattern of intimidation.
