SOYINKA DUMPS AMERICA FOR NIGERIA: TORE HIS GREEN CARD
Finally, Nigerian Nobel Laureate, Professor Wole Soyinka, is said to have fulfilled his vow to throw away his United States (US) residency green card should Donald Trump win the presidential election.
The playwright and poet, had vowed prior to US November 8 presidential election, that he was going to do away with his US green card, and give up his permanent US residency should Trump, then Republican candidate, who during his campaign promised to get tough on immigration, win the election.
Soyinka, who is scholar-in-residence at New York University’s Institute of African American Affairs, had, while speaking to students at a seminar, in Oxford University’s Ertegun House had said, “If in the unlikely event he (Trump) does win, the first thing he’ll do is to say 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.”
After Trump’s stunning victory as the next US president, winning Democrat candidate, Hillary Clinton who was favoured by the media and people around the world, Nigerians had in their thousands, took to social media, calling on Soyinka to cut his green card and leave the US.
However, three weeks after Trump’s emergence, Soyinka said he has already fulfilled his promise. “I have already done it. I have disengaged (from the United States). I have done what I said I would do.”
The 82-year-old Professor was learnt to have made this revelation on the side-lines of an education conference at the University of Johannesburg. He said that he had a horror of what was to come with Trump and has thrown away his green card, adding that he had relocated to Nigeria, his home country.
Soyinka, before this event, used to be a regular teacher at US universities including Harvard, Cornell and Yale.
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