Days before the November 8 elections, Wole Soyinka, Africa’s first Nobel prize in literature winner, took a stand. Should Trump win, he said, he’ll rip up his green card and return home. Now, with Trump confirmed as president-elect, Soyinka isn’t walking back on that claim. Describing his plans to leave the US as a “Wolexit,” the Nobel laureate says he’ll rip his green card on Jan. 20, 2017—the day Trump gets inaugurated as America’s 45th president.
As the rest of world comes to terms with a Trump presidency, many are wondering how far Trump will go with his controversial plans, especially building a wall between America and Mexico. But Soyinka thinks the process has already started. ”Trump’s wall is already under construction,” Soyinka said. “Walls are built in the mind, and Trump has erected walls, not only across the mental landscape of America, but across the global landscape.”
Soyinka is no stranger to divisive leaders like Trump. In Nigeria, he’s been a critic of military leaders over the years and was jailed and in solitary confinement for two years, during Nigeria’s civil war in the 1960s.
On the global implications of Trump’s win, Soyinka did not mince words: “It’s brought an already teetering world closer to the precipice.”