Commons:Deletion requests/File:Flag of the Republic of Benin (1967).svg

File:Flag of the Republic of Benin (1967).svg

There is no evidence to suggest that this image is legitimate. It purports to be a representation of a real flag used by a country that theoretically existed for all of seven hours, but there is no evidence to suggest that it was used or even created at that time. For example, you'd have thought it would be mentioned in this directly related paper brought up by Indy beetle.

As such, this image is actively misleading people -- which has led me to nominate it for deletion despite it being in use, as it is clearly outside of Commons' educational scope. See this and this discussion for more info. Ed ^{[talk] [OMT]} 18:03, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

 Keep, has source. I might as well request renaming. ErrrrrWhat (talk) 18:25, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

@ErrrrrWhat: What source are you referring to? The link offered under the "Source" parameter discusses the Flag of Biafra, not this one-day puppet republic. That website does host this, but it offers no proof to what we would consider a reliable source that this flag was actually used. The website is a crowd sourced blog of sorts. -Indy beetle (talk) 06:27, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

• Delete - Having overhauled potions of the English Wikipedia article on the Midwest Invasion of 1967, which is the event that spawned this one-day declared state, I have never encountered any serious source which purported that the declared Republic of Benin had any flag whatsoever (or functioning government, as it collapsed within 24 hours). The paper the nominator mentions above is the most in-depth source I've found on the declaration of Benin, and it makes no mention. This is obviously derivative fancruft of the flag of Biafra (which was real). The Commons is not the appropriate place for hosting such material. -Indy beetle (talk) 06:27, 30 July 2026 (UTC)
• Delete Per the discussion at Wikipedia, this is a made-up flag of no notability and possibly a deliberate fake. Nick-D (talk) 08:25, 30 July 2026 (UTC)

Weak Keep for achival reasons, but Rename to "fictional flag" and make it clear in the description of the file it is a fictional flag. I know I'm the one who sounded the alarm about this flag being fictuonal, but given that this file have been on the Wikipedia for two decades, and in general the Internet has copied this flag already, it is actually better to keep the file in, than remove it, and have someone eventually reupload it becouse they saw some online page use it as an official flag. Not to mention, there's at least one article, which actually uses this flag becouse a real artwork (a music album) implemented this flag from Wikipedia, thinking it represented the Republic of Benin. Thought, I will say, deleting it would solve the problem of the flag being present it dozens if not houndrets of articles across diferent language versions of Wikipedia. Thus, I'm also for the idea of deleting this specific file, and thus clearning all those Wikipedia articles, and later reuploading it as a new file, for internet archivist/artistic reasons.Artemis Andromeda (talk) 03:28, 10 August 2026 (UTC)

• Keep and rename. Having picked up several of these fake flags recently, I can sympathise with the desire to scrub them out of existence. However, if they are simply deleted there is a high likelihood that someone will reupload the same image, because they have unfortunately been widely circulated as a result of years on Wikipedia. Having a file name and templates that clearly identify a flag as fictitious is therefore a better option in my view and makes reversion easier when people inevitably try to re-add them to Wikipedia articles. ITBF (talk) 16:01, 12 August 2026 (UTC)