Wole Soyinka confirms destroying his Green Card

After threatening to do it a week before the US presidential elections last November, Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka has confirmed he has destroyed his green card because Donald Trump won.

In an interview with the Atlantic on Tuesday, Soyinka confirmed he had followed through on his pledge to destroy his green card if Trump won as he celebrated Thanksgiving with his family in the US.

Soyinka said he had made his green card “inoperable”. He did not expand on how he had destroyed it, but said: “I don’t have strong enough fingers to tear up a green card. As long as Trump is in charge, if I absolutely have to visit the United States, I prefer to go in the queue for a regular visa with others. I’m no longer part of the society, not even as a resident.”

Soyinka described the act as cathartic: “I delivered myself from uncertainty, from discomfort, from internal turmoil.”