[eluser]Colin Williams[/eluser]
"Controllers within controllers" makes no sense. Let's examine what CI defines a controller as: "Controllers are the heart of your application, as they determine how HTTP requests should be handled... A Controller is simply a class file that is named in a way that can be associated with a URI."
Controllers handle URI requests. They are not modular sections of a page display; they
build the page from modules. When you think "module" in CI, you're probably looking at a Library. Models should be reserved for data retrieval and data formatting.