A power outage hit Kenya on Sunday evening, paralyzing large parts of the country.
Transport Minister Kipchumba Murkomen called for an investigation into possible acts of sabotage and coverup over the third nationwide outage in three months.
Taking to his X, formerly Twitter handle, he wrote, “Considering the frequency of the power disruption, and taking into account the fact that JKIA is a facility of strategic national importance, are making q formal request to the National Police Service to investigate a possible act of sabotage and coverup.”
The electricity failure began around 8 p.m., affecting many vital facilities, including the main airport in the capital, Nairobi, were two terminals were without power for several hours.
Nairobi is also a major transport hub connecting East Africa to Asia, Europe and other parts of the world.
Commenting on the recent big blackouts, Murkomen said soon after visiting the airport late Sunday that “we are making a formal request to the National Police Service to investigate possible acts of sabotage and coverup.”
The state-run utility, Kenya Power, attributed the blackout to a “system disturbance” and said the problem was being addressed by technicians.
“We have lost electricity supply to various parts of the country due to a suspected fault affecting the power system,” a statement said.
Later Sunday, Kenya Power issued an update noting that it had restored electricity service to parts of the country, including some residential districts in the capital, but many areas in Kenya remained without power Monday morning
Reports revealed that during a similar blackout last month, it took engineers over 12 hours to restore power in most parts of the country.
Meanwhile, the worst outage was on Aug. 25, the longest disruption in Kenya’s history. The cause remains a mystery, with the power company blaming a failure at Africa’s largest wind farm, which laid the responsibility on the power grid instead.
In parts of the country, including Nairobi, it took almost 24 hours for the power to come back on.
Kenyans on social media demanded answers from Kenya Power over the frequent power outages following Sunday’s failure, while others mocked the agency, saying it was worse than power companies in Nigeria and South Africa, where rationing or load-shedding, as it is known, is common.
The latest blackout in Kenya comes at a time when the country is facing high fuel prices which many have blamed for millions of dollars in losses to businesses and the wider economy, which is struggling badly.
