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Kenya: Pioneer Female Referee Leaves Rich Legacy

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4 years ago

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As the burial of veteran Fifa referee Pamela Adhiambo Ochieng draws closer, former colleagues have continued to eulogise her for helping develop Kenyan football.

Adhiambo, 57, died on July 2 at St. Jairus Hospital in Kisumu, where she had been admitted for about two weeks. Her body is being preserved at Port Florence Community Hospital Mortuary in the Lakeside city ahead of the burial on Saturday in Ngere, Seme Sub-County.

Kenya Football Referees Association (KFRA) president Gilbert Moore Titus Ottieno recalled Adhiambo as a brave, forthright and hardworking person, noting that she always stood for the truth in the local football scene.

“I would like to send my heartfelt and sincere condolences to the family, the football referee fraternity and football at large in the country,” Ottieno told Nation Sport.

“We have lost a formidable leader. She served very effectively with a lot of honesty, impartiality and integrity that catapulted her into international refereeing. She was a friend and a mentor to many.”

Adhiambo was credited as a class three referee in 1991 after being trained by KFRA officials in Kakamega and attained Fifa accreditation in 1998.

Ottieno said that Adhiambo was among the few, local female referees officiating men’s matches, who refused to be arm-twisted by both the government and the then football administrators in the 90s.

Haphazard fixtures, arbitrary decisions, illogical demotions and promotions, and financial mismanagement were the order of the day then.

In December 2000, eight top flight football clubs formed the Inter Clubs Consultative Group (ICCG).

The ICCG, which Adhiambo and Ottieno were part of, then embarked on agitating for transparency from a corrupt and mismanaged KFF.

The ICCG later converted to the Kenyan Premier Football Group (KPFG) that evolved into the Kenyan Premier League (KPL) that brought a professionally managed league.

Adhiambo, who also served as a match commissioner both locally and internationally, was in 2012 appointed in the FKF Technical Committee, alongside chairman Elly Mukolwe, Ottieno, Hussein Terry, Evans Mwachia and Margaret Oduor.

Others included Maxim Itur, Alphonse Amugune, George Nyamwanda and Daniel Githaka.

She served in that capacity for three years and later continued to mentor upcoming female referees, while also volunteering as a match commissioner in local football matches in Mumias.