N. Eldon Tanner, a Canadian, went to Nigeria and began negotiations with the Nigerian government.

[7]: 23  However, several members of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles expressed concern about teaching black people and called for the program to be terminated.

They based their operations out of Enugu, and the first branch they organized was with Anthony Obinna as president.

Most of the earliest converts they baptized were in various villages throughout south-eastern Nigeria and had been meeting and seeking church membership for years, if not decades.

In 1988, the church's first stake in Nigeria was organized in Aba, with David W. Eka as president.

In that year church president Russell M. Nelson announced plans to build a temple in Lagos, Nigeria.

The LDS Church was still most heavily concentrated in south-east Nigeria, with Akwa Ibom State alone having 12 stakes.

The Abuja stakes were far and away the most northern in Nigeria, with the district in Jos containing the only other units of the church even close to that far north.

The growth had in some places been very fast, with Yorubaland (not including heavily Yoruba Lagos State) having gone from no stakes in 2013 to 5 by 2019.