YAOUNDE  (AFP) – Polling officials in Cameroon on Monday counted the votes of a presidential election that looked certain to extend incumbent Paul Biya’s 29-year rule but was called a “mess” by the opposition.

Sunday’s vote was marked by widespread voter apathy, with Biya’s reelection never in doubt, but was also marred by the killings of two policemen and an opposition official.

A party worker for the Social Democratic Front, whose leader John Fru Ndi was seen as Biya’s main challenger, was killed in the western region of Bandjoun by supporters of the ruling party late Sunday, the SDF said.

No independent confirmation of the incident was immediately available.

The SDF charged that “Virginie Takoguem, an SDF observer in a polling station, has been murdered by local officials of Biya’s Cameroon People’s Democratic Rally.”

“Her only crime was to have tried to preserve the sincerity of the vote which stated that the SDF won in the Keng school (polling station),” the statement said.

The two military policemen were killed in an ambush by suspected “Nigerian pirates who often work with those who illegally exploit forest” resources, said a local official in the Bakassi peninsula where the attack took place.

The official, Peter Tieh Nde, said Cameroonian troops have been pursuing the alleged attackers since Sunday.

Cameroon’s Territorial Administration Minister Marafa Hamidu Yaya said earlier that the armed attackers had not yet been identified and that the policemen were killed while securing the electoral process.

Armed groups are active in Bakassi, a territory potentially rich in oil, gas and fish stocks that was for 15 years the object of a frontier dispute with Nigeria until the International Court of Justice ruled in Cameroon’s favour in 2008.

Cameroon’s 78-year-old leader sought a sixth term against 22 other candidates, after a campaign generally greeted with indifference in a country plagued by corruption and poverty.

“Turnout is frankly very weak,” Narcisse Arido, an international election observer from the Central African Republic, said in the port city of Douala, the economic capital, without giving detailed figures.

A polling station head, who asked not to be named, said that Cameroonians were “not interested because they have the impression that the other candidates are unable to hold their own against Mr Biya”.

Polling had made a slow start across the country, with delays reported at many of the 24,000 voting stations.

“It is a complete mess,” Social Democratic Front (SDF) vice president Joshua Osih said.

The main opposition groups claimed the ballot was rigged from the outset, lamenting the level of control Biya exercises over the electoral commission.

But the president defended the polling body.

“I cannot say that there is such a thing as perfection but its performance has been positive. I am simply asking for the people’s indulgence over possible irregularities,” he said. “There was never any intent to cheat.”

Biya skipped most of the campaign, but made a rare appearance in his native south to wrap up the campaign on Saturday.

Fru Ndi was Biya’s most high profile rival, but some observers argue that the perennial runner-up has lost much of his aura in recent years.

More than 6,000 election observers were accredited to monitor voting, held under tight security. Seven million of the country’s 19.4 million citizens were eligible to vote.

Biya has faced calls to quit from home and abroad, with accusations that he has left the country marooned in economic stagnation and corruption.

A third of Cameroonians do not have access to clean, running water and electricity, and one in four lives on less than 1.1 euros ($1.5) per day.

The Supreme Court now has 15 days to publish the results.