Intended use of the Unit Testing built in to CodeIgniter
I've received an answer from another source and I want to post it here since I am aware of it.
The basic answer is that the CI (CodeIgniter) unit test class is not intended like a traditional unit test suite (JUnit, NUnit, or python's unittest). In CI, the class is intended to be used within the target (the testing target's code base).
To be clear: I'm not endorsing this nor am I sure this is the intended use of the CI unit_test class. This is just what I was told thus far. Perhaps others heard this too and can vote it up. If this is voted up or has support via comments, I'll mark this as an answer. I am still interested in differing opinions.