‘I have thrown my green card away,’ Nobel Laureate says

Hemade the disclosure on Thursday, December 1, on the sidelines of an education conference at the University of Johannesburg, AFP reports.

“I have already done it, I have disengaged (from the United States). I have done what I said I would do,” Soyinka said

“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. 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 added.

Soyinka had, in November, promised to rip up the green card if Donald Trump emerged victorious in the US presidential elections.

“If in the unlikely event he does win, the first thing he’ll do is to say [that] all green-card holders must reapply to come back into the US. Well, I’m not waiting for that. The moment they announce his victory, I will cut my green card myself and start packing up," he said.

Trump eventually became the president-elect of the US after defeating former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

The billionaire's victory led many Nigerians to remind Soyinka of his promise to destroy the green card leading the playwright to describe his critics as "noisome creatures."

"Let me end with a Red Card to those noisome creatures, the nattering nit-wits of Internet: maybe Trumpland is not as despicable as the Naijaland you impose on our reality from your secure cesspits of anonymity. Go back to school. Your problem is ignorance, ignorance of whatever subject you so readily comment upon. Learn to study your subjects before opening up on issues beyond your grasp," he said.

“Sometimes you make one feel like swapping one green for another out of embarrassment for occupying the same national space as you. If it even becomes convenient to bring it forward, I intend to do so, but please don’t come at me with plaints of time imprecision.

“I never discussed it with you, nor invited you to a private decision whose execution was already in the making. Do not try to browbeat me. It’s a waste of time – all you have to do is immerse yourselves in my antecedents. It will not attempt to deal with the notion of an exit time-table as conceived by others," he added.

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A Nigerian lawyer, Kayode Ajulo later warned that Soyinka could go to prison if he destroys his US green cardas the act amounts to willful destruction of government property.