Here is the rule in English:
Any HTTP request other than those for index.php, assets folder, files folder and robots.txt is treated as a request for your
You can add this to your config:
location ~* ^/(assets|files|robots\.txt) { }
This will work correctly with your location / rule.
Your config also need to add root document and default index file.
...
root /ftp/wardrobe;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?/$request_uri;
}
location ~* ^/(assets|files|robots\.txt) { }
...
                                                                        Please try this. It works for me.
server {
    server_name domain.tld;
    root /var/www/codeignitor;
    index index.html index.php;
    # set expiration of assets to MAX for caching
    location ~* \.(ico|css|js|gif|jpe?g|png)(\?[0-9]+)?$ {
        expires max;
        log_not_found off;
    }
    location / {
        # Check if a file or directory index file exists, else route it to index.php.
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php;
    }
    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}
                                                                        You want to do this instead:
if ($request_uri !~ ^/(index\.php|assets|files|robots\.txt)) {
    rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php/$1 last;
}
$request_uri is for the original URI request by the client. If you want the URI request AFTER other Nginx rewrite rules have processed it then you would use $uri. However, for what you are trying to do the prior would be the one you would want.
Also, you need to escape special regular expression characters like . by using a backslash.