Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig gibbons.hosting-nation.com. NS
Answer
gibbons.hosting-nation.com. 5 NS ns1.hosting-nation.net.
gibbons.hosting-nation.com. 5 NS ns2.hosting-nation.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.hosting-nation.net. 5 A 143.198.234.59
ns2.hosting-nation.net. 5 A 143.110.218.61
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0