Why is my form validation not getting set in codeigniter - php

Question

im trying to create a templated system with CI. So far everything is working flawlessly and im testing out form validation but its not working at all. As you can see from the code below there are both html5 required statements as well as the codeigniter rules. Neither of which are working after I hit the submit button. So i'm not sure whats going wrong. Something stupid im sure.
public function show_form(){
$form_data = '<div class="row">
<div class="col-md-12">
<div class="card-box">
<h4 class="m-t-0 header-title"><b>Basic Form Wizard</b></h4>
<form id="basic-form" action="#">
<div>
<h3>Account</h3>
<section>
<div class="form-group clearfix">
<label class="col-lg-2 control-label " for="username">User name *</label>
<div class="col-lg-10">
<input class="form-control" id="username" name="username" type="text">
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-group clearfix">
<label class="col-lg-2 control-label " for="password"> Password *</label>
<div class="col-lg-10">
<input id="password" name="password" type="text" class="required form-control">
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-group clearfix">
<label class="col-lg-2 control-label " for="confirm">Confirm Password *</label>
<div class="col-lg-10">
<input id="confirm" name="confirm" type="text" class="required form-control">
</div>
</div>
</section>
<input type="submit" value="Submit" />
</div>
</form>
</div>
</div>
</div>';
$this->CI->form_validation->set_rules('username', 'Username', 'required');
if ( $this->CI->form_validation->run() == FALSE ):
echo "<pre>Before Validation</pre>";
echo validation_errors();
echo "<pre>After Validation</pre>";
echo $form_data;
else:
echo "We did it";
endif;
}
Thanks in advance for any guidance.