Abdel-Fatau Musa, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Political Affairs, Peace, and Security, said this in a Sunday interview with the BBC.

The Niger junta’s head, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, said on televised broadcast on Saturday night that the army will cede control to the civilian government within the next three years.

However, General Tchiani’s plan, according to Abdel-Fatau Musa in the interview, is merely a front for negotiations and diplomacy.

In a last-ditch diplomatic effort to negotiate a peaceful resolution with the Niger junta, former Military Head of State Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar (rtd) led a delegation of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to Niger earlier on Saturday.

At the airport, Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine met the team and led them to the presidential palace.

Following their meeting with the leader of the junta, General Abdourahamane Tchiani, they later had a meeting with the ousted president of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum.

The first peace conference presided over by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar was when ECOWAS’s standby force was activated.

It said that the Niger junta disregarded the demand that President Mohamed Bazoum be reinstated.