MADALLA (AFP) –  President Goodluck Jonathan on Saturday said the “cancerous” Boko Haram Islamist sect blamed for hundreds of deaths wanted to destroy the country but would be foiled.

The sect, “started as a harmless group….They have now grown cancerous,” he said, speaking at a church in Madalla, outside the capital Abuja, where 44 people were killed during a Christmas bomb attack claimed by the group.

“And Nigeria, being the body, they want to kill it. But nobody will allow them to do that,” he said.

Boko Haram is believed to include different factions with varying aims, including those with political links as well as a hard-core Islamist cell that has drawn supporters from young people in the deeply impoverished north.

Madalla : Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan listens to relatives of Christmas bomb blast's victims as he visits the damaged St. Theresa Catholic Church in Madalla near the capital Abuja on December 31. Photo: AFP

The sect has claimed responsibility for a spate of deadly bombings and gun attacks in the capital Abuja and several parts of the north, including the Christmas bombings of a Roman Catholic church outside the city, and elsewhere which claimed at least 49 lives.

Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, is roughly divided between a mainly Muslim north and predominantly Christian south.