Lifting the Exponent

(From 2020 AIME I Problems/Problem 12)

Let $p$ be an odd prime, and let $a$ and $b$ be integers relatively prime to $p$ such that $p \mid (a-b)$ . Let $n$ be a positive integer. Then the number of factors of $p$ that divide $a^n - b^n$ is equal to the number of factors of $p$ that divide $a-b$ plus the number of factors of $p$ that divide $n$ .