Protests are planned to make sure the world does not forget about 200 Nigerian schoolgirls, who have been missing for more than two weeks.

Dozens of female students were kidnapped, most likely by Boko Haram Islamists, from the Government Girls Secondary School in the Chibok area of north-eastern Nigeria.

A group called Women for Peace and Justice orchestrated a “million-woman protest march” in the capital Abuja this week, demanding that more resources be committed to finding and securing the girls’ release.

Boko Haram’s name translates as “Western education is forbidden”.

The group’s five-year uprising has plagued the African nation, focussing particularly on vulnerable students.

Boko Haram have set schools on fire, massacred students as they sleep and set off bombs at university campus churches.

Gunmen stormed the government school at night on April the 14th, forcing 129 students, aged between 12 and 17 years old, onto a convoy of trucks.

Officials say 52 have since escaped, but that number is disputed by locals.

There has been limited success in tracking the girls’ movements.

Parents and residents have pooled their money to pay for fuel to conduct their own searches, saying the military has done almost nothing to help.

The girls are believed to been moved to Chad and Cameroon.

Disturbingly, local media report that they will likely be sold as brides to other Islamist fighters, for a price around $13.

Retired teacher Samson Dawah reportedly told a gathering of townspeople; “We have heard from members of the forest community where they took the girls.”

“They said there had been mass marriages and the girls are being shared out as wives among the Boko Haram militants,” he said.

“My wife keeps asking me, why isn't the government deploying every means to find our children.”

The armed forces say the militant group works in small, disconnected and highly-mobile bands.

‘We are trying, but our efforts are being countered in a way that it is very clear they are being tipped off about our movements,” one Nigerian solider told the Guardian.

“Any time we make a plan to rescue [the girls] we have been ambushed,” said the artillery-soldier-turned-rescuer.

“We know where these girls are being held in the forest, but every day we go in and come out disappointed. Definitely somebody high up in the chain of command is leaking up information to these people.”

Support for the schoolgirls has been growing on Twitter, under #BringBackOurGirls.

The UN and international governments are expected to announce a formal assistance effort in coming days.