implementing a common account bar

[eluser]gon[/eluser]
You could have the account bar markup in a separate view.
This view should get as data the section, and render the bar accordingly.

Code:

function show_section() {
   $account_bar_data['selected_section'] = $selected_section;
   $account_bar_html = $this->load->view("account_bar_view", $account_bar_data, true);

   $data['account_bar'] = $account_bar_html;
   $this->load->view("section_view", $data);
}

You can build a helper that does get the account bar HTML automatically, if you don't want to repeat the code on every controller.