Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said on Sunday violence blamed on Islamist group Boko Haram was worse than the country’s 1960s civil war, with sympathisers of the sect in government and security agencies.

“The situation we have in our hands is even worse than the civil war that we fought,” Jonathan said at a church service, referring to Nigeria’s 1967-70 civil war that killed more than a million people.

The death toll linked to violence blamed on the Islamist group has not reached anywhere near that level, but Jonathan cited the unpredictability and pervasiveness of the threat.