A while ago, a colleague of mine and office wag, Gado, took great exception to one of my ties. 

"Young man," he fumed, "We pay you a lot of money but you can't even buy a good tie." He examined its foreign label with distaste and said: "Italy kitu gani, this is River Road!"

We live in a country of counterfeits and fakes. There is a lawyers' war story I have been hearing - and which I can't say I believe entirely - that the real sharpies don't go to court until they know who is eating from who, how much and if their client is willing to pay more. Even justice, it seems, is counterfeit.

When you buy a pack of Jogoo (a brand of sifted maize flour) and it tastes somewhat crappy, you most probably grumble: "Those people at Unga are losing their touch. The quality of their posho has plummeted, no wonder they are making losses." What you don't know is that what you are eating isn't an Unga product, but a counterfeit piece of rubbish packed in forged wrappers.

The textbooks you buy for your children are also quite probably forgeries. The forgers and counterfeiters are buying one copy of the genuine book and using it as their artwork to print other copies which they then sell to you, a lot of times through large, established and respectable booksellers and bookshops.

Hell, they are even forging iron sheets. The manufacturers are now constrained to buy space in the newspapers to advise customers how to identify the genuine article.

I imagine there is some fellow walking the streets with papers proving that he was your MBA classmate at the University of Nairobi, and did much better than you. He will spring his impressive forgeries on an unsuspecting employer who will discover a few days into the job that the guy is not only illiterate, but a complete imbecile. He bought his degree for a couple of thousand shillings in River Road.

I was shocked last weekend when a raid by police and Publisher Barrack Muluka unearthed such a range of counterfeiting as to make me wonder whether any of the products that I consume are not dangerous fakes that will kill me.

It was discovered that the forger was counterfeiting packets for medical brands, MBA certificates, title deeds, passports, US, Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ethiopian currency, official Immigration documents and books among a load of other things.

I have heard of forgeries of government documents such as gun permits, road licences and any kind of official security document that you can think of.

It may well be that counterfeit products and genuine products are in the market in equal measure. No wonder then our manufacturers are struggling and the government is broke. Because the forgers drive brand owners and copyright holders out of the market but they don't pay taxes and use sweated labour. They are common thieves who take from the economy but put in nothing. 

I don't think there is a manufacturer in this country who does not live in terror of an army of forgers working away in the secret world of the city's armpit - Kirinyaga Road - producing shabby copies of their products and destroying not only their market, but also the standing of their brands with consumers. Those that can't be forged locally are imported from foreign armpits.

This army of forgers is destroying not just the economy but also the credibility of our institutions. Very soon a Kenyan academic certificate or official document will be like Nigerian ones: Automatically suspect and therefore largely useless. Kenyans will be unable to travel unmolested and will be unable to get jobs internationally, and even locally because employers will prefer qualifications that are above suspicion.

It is a tragedy to allow the problem to become a catastrophe. I think Mr Amos Wako, the Attorney-General, whose alacrity for bringing laws to gag me is well established, should do the nation a service, if indeed he is still capable of that. He should bring a law that will make the cost of counterfeiting and forging so expensive that the army of forgers that is busy destroying us will find itself an alternative occupation.

Secondly, I think businesses and institutions that are at risk should take Mr Muluka's example: Manufacturers and universities must play an active role in the investigation, outing and destruction of the forgers. Their survival depends on it.

Finally, Trade Minister Nicholas Biwott, the Kenya Revenue Authority and industry lobbies such as the Kenya Association of Manufacturers and the Federation of Kenya Employers as well as Cotu should sit down with a view to establishing a task force that will investigate and destroy the counterfeiters. 

Left to themselves, these forgers would bring down the last pillar of our economy.