Describing the group as hustlers, the governor said those calling for the Yorubas to secede from Nigeria do not represent the ethnic group.

Akeredolu said this in reaction to a statement credited to a group under the auspices of the Ilana Omo Oodua led by Prof Banji Akintoye.

He said the Yoruba people would not allow “impostors” to lead any agitation on their behalf, saying it is difficult to deceive the people of the South-West.

Akintoye had earlier tackled Akeredolu for rejecting the agitation for the creation of a Yoruba Nation. The group said the Ondo State Governor could only speak for himself and not the people of his state.

However, in a statement by Doyin Odebowale, the governor’s Special Assistant on Special Duties and Strategy, Akeredolu declared that Akintoye was not a leader of Yorubaland and could not speak for the people.

The statement reads in part, “Let it be reiterated again. There will be no agitation for secession in any part of Ondo State. Prof Akintoye should submit himself to the people if he is so desirous of representing them.

“It is presumptuous, denigrating and condescendingly spiteful for a group of hustlers, living largely in anonymity but struggling for relevance, to keep proclaiming and legislating on issues which affect the destiny of a whole people, without the faintest suggestion of paying even scant regard to their feelings or extending due courtesy to the real representatives of the people whose opinions they discount as unimportant.

“The people are discerning. They know the impostors. They have not forgotten the activities of the suborned agitators, the presumed penitent activists. The Ondo people, and indeed Yoruba are the easiest to lead but the most difficult to deceive. With them, sophistry and demagoguery have their limits.”

Akeredolu had recently warned a political enforcer, Sunday Igboho and others agitating for a sovereign Yoruba State to stay away from Ondo state, saying his people have elected to stay in the Federal Republic of Nigeria as constituted.