The dataset for birds in Nigeria was obtained from the Nigeria Bird Atlas Project (NiBAP), which is a member of the continent-wide African Bird Atlas Project (ABAP). The NiBAP's objective is to map all of Nigeria's bird species and describe their status with the help of valuable input from citizen scientists - volunteer members of the public who are keen to contribute by going birding and submitting their observations to the project. The project has been running since the end of 2015.The dataset published here covers adhoc records from the beginning of the project on 2015-05-22 to the present. A number of citizen scientists across the country were involved in collecting and digitizing the data. This was made possible with the aid of a digital data collection mobile application called Birdlasser (https://www.birdlasser.com/) and by following an established bird atlas protocol for the Bird Map Africa. The submitted data is usually pipelined into a central database for the ABAP and displayed on the BirdMap Africa portal (http://www.birdmap.africa) after a thorough vetting process.