Lagos, Nigeria (CNN) -- Nigeria's House and Senate approved a resolution Tuesday to install the country's vice president as head of state until ailing President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua recovers enough to resume his duties.
But the Executive Council, made up of government ministers, must still approve the resolution before Vice President Goodluck Jonathan can become acting president.
The Executive Council is likely to discuss the matter at a regularly scheduled meeting Wednesday.
The absence of Yar'Adua, who left Nigeria for medical treatment in Saudi Arabia in November, has created a power vacuum in Africa's most populous country, observers have said. It also sparked demonstrations in the nation's capital, Abuja, where protesters demanded a constitutional order on his absence and evidence about his true state of health.
But Nigeria's Attorney General Michael Aondoakaa insisted Tuesday there has been no power vacuum.
"The main issue is that there must be ways of resolving our progress constitutionally," Aondoakaa told CNN's Christiane Amanpour. "The system is working because nobody has taken up arms."
He added, "What is important now is to move the country forward ... for the three arms of government to come and support the vice president to carry out his duties."
Aondoakaa's stance was criticized by a Nobel Prize winner for literature, Wole Soyinka of Nigeria, who accused the attorney general of talking "from all four compass points of his mouth. ... He's told so many untruths."
Soyinka accused the ruling People's Democratic Party of taking advantage of the president's absence. "The issue is that certain elements within the ruling party love this hiatus, they love the headlessness of government because they can proceed to loot and create their own little empires while the president is away," he said.
Soyinka predicted that the PDP will not give up its current position easily. "They're going to find other forms of delaying tactics, and I'm talking about certain criminal elements within the ruling party," he said. "They are the ones really responsible for this."
Soyinka added that Nigerians may soon need to embark on a campaign of civil disobedience to stop the PDP, which he described as "an illegitimate, unelected, corrupt and murderous party."
A failure to implement measures such as electoral reform -- designed to put the country back on a democratic path -- could foment such a campaign, he said.
"There's got to be a review," he said. "Failing all this, the citizenry will embark on a civil disobedience campaign. I see no other course for the nation."
Soyinka said such a campaign would begin on a small scale and escalate until "so-called legislators" are made to live up to their responsibilities.
"It'll mean a de-recognition of the government to start with, flouting the law wherever possible," he said. "We've demonstrated that the rallies need not be violent as long as civil rights are not trampled on."
The president is being treated for inflammation of tissue around the heart, a condition that was diagnosed in November after he complained of chest pain in Abuja. He was taken to King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he had undergone his last checkup in August, his doctor said.
Yar'Adua said at the time he did not intend to resign while in Saudi Arabia, but no further news came from the president for almost two months until January 13, when he gave the BBC an interview from his hospital bed.
In a frail voice, Yar'Adua sought to assure his countrymen that he was getting better and intended to return soon to power.
Nigeria's Senate expressed concern "that there had been no formal communication to the National Assembly" -- as required by the nation's constitution -- to "empower the vice president to act and perform the functions of the president," Voice of Nigeria reported.
But Aondoakaa, the attorney general, has said the president did not need to write such a letter.
In addition to internal discord over its missing president, the oil-rich nation has faced international heat after one of its citizens allegedly attempted to blow up a U.S.-bound jetliner on Christmas Day.
U.S. authorities then required passengers on U.S.-bound flights from Nigeria to undergo enhanced security measures. A senior U.S. administration official said Nigeria fell into the U.S. Transportation Security Administration category of "state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest."
CNN's Christian Purefoy contributed to this report.
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