Africa’s First Nobel Laureate (Wole Soyinka) For Literature Leaves Trump's America

Before the presidential election, Wole Soyinka vowed he wouldn't be a part of Trump’s America. He followed through his promise.

Prior to the U.S. presidential election, Nigeria’s first Nobel Prize-winning author, also Africa’s first Nobel Prize winner, Wole Soyinka had decided to leave the United States and cut his green cards into pieces if Donald Trump became president.

Then Trump was elected president.

So, Soyinka followed through his promise and relocated from New York City to Abeokuta.

The 82-year-old, who hails from Nigeria, became the first African to win the Nobel Prize for literature in 1986.

Initially, he promised to “shred” his green card on Trump’s inauguration day in January, however, the man lost patience and and cut off all ties early.

“I have already done it,” the 1986 Nobel Prize winner told AFP at the Times Higher Education BRICS and Emerging Economies Universities Summit in Johannesburg. “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 card and I have relocated, and I’m back to where I have always been,” he said, possibly referring to his hometown of Abeokuta, in southwest Nigeria.

The Nobel laureate had been living in the United States for more than 20 years and was a regular teacher at prestigious universities such as Harvard, Cornell and Yale.

Recently, he was a scholar-in-residence at New York University’s Institute of African American Affairs.

Though Soyinka decided to leave Trump’s America, he doesn’t encourage other Nigerians to follow his footsteps.

“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 commented.