…says ‘I’ve forgiven Americans for voting racist Trump’
Inspite of the inauguration of the new President of the United States, Joe Biden, Nobel Laureate, Prof. Wole Soyinka, says he will not renew his torn green card, which he destroyed in 2016 following the election of former President Donald Trump.
Soyinka also said he has forgiven Americans for electing Trump, who he labeled a “racist” and a “xenophobe”.
He stated these while speaking on an Arise Television programme on Wednesday.
The Nobel Laureate said he won’t be renewing his American immigrant visa (green card), which he tore in 2016 over Americans’ decision to vote for Trump because he does not usually need it to enter the US.
Displaying pieces of his torn green card on TV, the playwright stated that Americans had redeemed themselves by voting out Trump
He said, “I feel honoured to be associated with the democratic forces of the United States for correcting the unbelievable error that they committed four years ago.
“I consider myself back in that community from which I dissociated myself four years ago and I am very glad to be back but I am not renewing my green card, it is not necessary. I go in and out as a visiting alien and that is good enough for me.”
Soyinka noted that his concern with the 2016 US elections was because of the large population of Nigerians living in that country, adding that America’s history would be incomplete without blacks.
He said he tore his green card because the Americans did not heed his warnings about the impending danger posed by a Trump Presidency.
“The complacency was very painful and I said if you people are so careless as to let this racist, this monster, this xenophobic aberrant, this disrespect of the female gender, this serial bankrupt, this man who called your own society a shithole country, if you are so careless as to let him become the next President, I am moving out,” he said.
Soyinka said in a way, he was happy about the attack on the Capitol building by pro-Trump rioters, stressing that he wanted Americans to understand how fragile democracy is.
Soyinka said, “So, you can imagine what I have felt over the last few weeks, the siege on the Capitol. In a way it was rather heart-warming for the Americans themselves to feel that what they have been fighting for is not really a given in their society and they had to confront it in a brutal unbelievable way and they came out of it in flying colours.
“It is not over not by any means, I don’t say that for a single moment but it has been a lesson for us in this continent and we should be grateful that it did happen. I am sorry of course about the loss of life, I regret the disruption of normal life but now we are placed on the same playing level, that we are all fighting for the same virtue in human conduct, the same system we all believe in that you cannot take it for granted, not anymore and for us here in Nigeria, it has been, I hope, it was been a heart-warming occasion.”
By first news online
