Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig ne. NS
Answer
ne. 5 NS ne.cctld.authdns.ripe.net.
ne. 5 NS ns-ne.afrinic.net.
ne. 5 NS ns.intnet.ne.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns.intnet.ne. 171638 A 41.138.54.10
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0