Charred bodies and pieces of the wrecked plane were strewn around the disaster site.
The Sosoliso Airlines McDonnell Douglas DC-9 crashed at about midday as it approached the airport in the southern oil centre of Port Harcourt.
The cause of the accident was unknown.
There was stormy weather around the airport at the time of the crash, and witnesses said they saw lightning flashes as the plane approached the runway.
Frantic family members at the airport said the plane had been carrying 75 school children home for Christmas holidays.
Aviation officials said seven of the 110 on the plane were crew, but he gave no indication of who the survivors were.
The plane's airport of origin was Abuja, the Nigerian capital.
It was the second Nigerian plane accident in seven weeks - raising questions about air safety in Africa's most-populous nation of 130 million people.
On October 22, an Abuja-bound Boeing 737-200 crashed after taking off from the airport at Lagos, Nigeria's biggest city, killing 117 people on board the Bellview Airlines flight.
The exact cause of that crash remains unclear, but US investigators sent to help with the investigation ruled out terrorism, according to Nigeria's Aviation Ministry.