Most of Geoffrey Webb’s account of his period in Nigeria - Bornu, Zaria, Kaduna, Bida, Ilorin, Omu - was first published, in instalments, illustrated with his photographs, in the Leicester Evening Mail, in November 1936. Here is the full version, with additional notes by his sons Adrian and Nigel who both served in Africa. Proficient in Hausa, Geoffrey Webb took a strong and well-observed interest in local customs, as is evident from his account. Later, in collaboration with Captain Frank William Taylor, he wrote Labarun Al’adun Hausawa da zantatukansu (Accounts and conversations describing certain customs of the Hausas), published by Oxford University Press in 1932 as No. 7 in ‘Taylor’s Fulani-Hausa series’ of language books and readers. Anthony Kirk-Greene writes: ‘This is a really delightful memoir - a first class read. Unusual among the Colonial Service memoirs which have become familiar reading since the 1980s, here is a classic of a much earlier era. It is the almost tangible intensity of personal relations with Nigerians as much as the standard pleasures (and problems) of life and society on a small station, that will emerge with poignancy and pleasure to grip many a reader. Five Years is surely one of the most attractive, honest and readable personal memoirs of Colonial Service work and life in an earlier Nigeria that I have had the pleasure of reading - a truly enjoyable and valuable new source.’