Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo, chair of the West African bloc ECOWAS, has told Mali’s junta that elections announced for February must be ahead of schedule, his delegation said Sunday.

Akufo-Addo delivered the message to the country’s strongman, Colonel Assimi Goita, during talks in Bamako.

Goita is behind both Mali’s recent coups, having installed a civilian-led interim government under international pressure after the first one only to remove it in May, later declaring himself interim president.

But a senior member of the ECOWAS delegation told AFP: “Our message was unambiguous and we said it clearly: the elections have to be held on the scheduled dates.

“The aim was to get a firm message across, and we did,” said the source, who asked to remain anonymous.

An ECOWAS delegation will return to Bamako at the end of October when they hope to receive the assurances they are seeking.

Earlier Goita, who overthrew the elected president last year, met the Ghanaian leader at Bamako airport, Mali’s presidency announced on social media.

Ghana currently holds ECOWAS’s rotating chair, but Akufo-Addo was accompanied by Nigeria’s ex-president Goodluck Jonathan — who is mediating in the Malian crisis — and Jean-Claude Kassi Brou, the ECOWAS commission president.

The local authorities briefed Malian state media only, an AFP correspondent said.