'What's going on? Three nationwide blackouts in three months have Kenyans worried

Kenya Power confirmed the outage in a statement, stating that it had lost power supply to several parts of the country due to a suspected "fault affecting the power system."

The power company stated that it was working to restore power as soon as possible and apologised to its customers for the inconvenience.

"An update on the restoration will be given in due course," the company said. 

The Sunday blackout, one of several in recent months, did not go unnoticed, with Kenyans taking to their preferred social media platforms to air their grievances and, potentially, lighten the blackout burden.

Kenya Power was trending top on Sunday, with the JKIA hot at its wake as Kenyans across the interwebs shared their sentiments as the busy airport was yet again plunged into darkness. 

Sunday's outage was the third major blackout in three months, and halted critical services at JKIA, where backup generators reportedly failed to start.

The first outage was on August 25, while the second was on November 11.

During the outage on November 11, it took over 12 hours to restore power in most parts of the country.

In August, after Kenya Power issued a brief statement announcing a "system disturbance leading to loss of bulk power supply," Transport CS Kipchumba Murkomen apologised after passengers were stranded at JKIA.

"I am really sorry for what has happened," transport minister Kipchumba Murkomen said in a statement close to midnight. "There is no excuse worth reporting and there is no reason why our airport is in darkness."

Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) stated that one of its stand-by generators, which serves the terminal, did not come on after the power went out.

Murkomen said KAA's board had terminated the contract of Managing Director Alex Gitari, appointing Henry Ogoye as acting head.

It also transferred JKIA's manager, Abel Gogo, to manage a different airport, replacing him with Selina Gor.

KAA will move to swiftly put into service two generators that were already procured, Murkomen said, to ensure the incident does not recur.

In a statement issued on November 30, CS Murkomen stated that he had received an interim report on the state of JKIA, Moi, and Wilson airports prepared by a technical committee he appointed.

He directed the Kenya Airports Authority (KAA) to commission standby generators to provide primary backup as well as provide an additional secondary backup generator to JKIA's Terminals 1A, 1E, and 2.

It is still unclear what precipitated the Sunday incident at JKIA, despite the technical committee report outlining what needed to be done.